Ditta Baron Hoeber: Painted Photographs

12.26 is pleased to present Painted Photographs, a solo presentation by Philadelphia-based artist Ditta Baron Hoeber. Working across various media, including poetry, bookmaking, painting, photography, and sculpture, the works residing in this exhibition are a culmination of Hoeber’s characteristic traits as an artist. While the artist is more widely known for her handmade books, of which she’s made hundreds in her lifetime, Hoeber’s Painted Photographs features just that: photographs painted. But they’re not just photographs with paint, they’re also sculptures, following a minimalistic sensibility in their presentation and process. Small, almost microscopic, photographs centered in white box-like paper frames become isolated, still moments of focus for the viewer. The artist selected these photographs to paint over parts found inessential, so rather than discarding imperfect images, she transforms them into new works in a naturally intuitive process of selection, addition, and subtraction. As for the contents of the wall-hung images, viewers can make out figures in moments of reverie, averse to the viewer’s gaze. Dear Cho features an ambiguous individual with their head cast down; the image crops off the figure’s head at the bridge of the nose. Ada Sleeping reveals an intimate moment of hibernation. Yellow Dress shows a grown woman, sandwiched between two young children, one looking up longingly to her and the other consumed in their own private world. Poppy is a departure from the series of images, as it depicts a flower, pointed, facing the viewer head-on. This is, really, the only subject that meets the gaze of the viewer. Dance (KYL) and Vanessa are kindred in spirit, as Vanessa is a dance choreographer. Hoeber captured those two images while assembling a series of photographs documenting the creation of a dance performance. Accompanying the exhibition is Hoeber’s newest book of poetry, entitled Without You. Acting as an extended poem sequence, the subjects of Without You are those of loss, love, ghosts, ceremony, and celebration. Ditta Baron Hoeber (b. 1942) lives and works in Philadelphia, PA. She earned accreditations in sculpture and painting from Moore College of Art and Design and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts between 1960 and 1965 and was a summer resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting. Hoeber has recently presented solo exhibitions with 2C Books, Philadelphia, PA (2025); Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA (2024); Philobiblon Club, Philadelphia, PA (2024); 57 West 57 Gallery, New York, NY (2024); Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Philadelphia, PA (2021), among others. She’s presented in group exhibitions with Kendall Koppe, Glasgow, UK (2025); Philadelphia Center for the Books, Online (2021), among many others. Her work resides in numerous collections, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; the Franklin Furnace Artist Book Collection at the Museum of Modern Art Library, New York, NY; University of Pennsylvania Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Artist Book Collection, Philadelphia, PA; Chelsea College of Art and Design Library, London, UK; the Clarence Ward Art Library at Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Library, New York, NY, among others. Hoeber has created over 200 art books since the 1990s