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# UCR ARTS Presents Dispatches: The Photography of Douglas McCulloh, 1990–2025
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/ucr-arts-presents-dispatches-the-photography-of-douglas-mcculloh-1990-2025/
- Published: 2026-09-11T14:30:55.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-11T14:30:55.000Z
- Description: The first full survey of the Southern California photographer’s four-decade career is opening this fall at UCR ARTS in downtown Riverside.
- Author: UCR ARTS
- Tags: Announcement, Exhibition Announcement, California, UCR Arts, Sponsored

Southern California photographer Douglas McCulloh spent nearly four decades developing conceptual photographic projects based on building systems to choose where he would point his camera. On view September 12 through December 20, 2026 in downtown Riverside, [UCR ARTS: California Museum of Photography](https://bit.ly/3Sub1xX?ref=hyperallergic.com) presents [*Dispatches: The Photography of Douglas McCulloh, 1990–2025*](https://bit.ly/4gVK6V0?ref=hyperallergic.com), the first exhibition to survey the full breadth of his work. Two important tools — maps and chance operations — were central to his practice. He aimed to encounter the visual world as it actually exists, removing intention rather than following the edicts of conventional photography. 

The exhibition brings together McCulloh’s major series in extensive form, including *Chance Encounters* (1992–1999), in which McCulloh spoke with nearly everyone he met across 22,000 miles of chance-selected terrain; *Lost Among the Stars* (2003–2006), built around 90 fixed points in Hollywood history; *Dream Street* (1999–2009), a decade spent chronicling a Southern California subdivision from construction to the collapse of the housing bubble; and his final, most ambitious undertaking, *American Cross* (2013–2025) — a journey along locations defined by a giant X drawn across the country. He began the project in January 2013 and covered more than 5,352 miles of the route before passing away on January 5, 2025, following a short illness, just over 400 miles short of its completion.

The exhibition also includes [*The Great Picture: Revisiting The Legacy Project*](https://bit.ly/4xm7elj?ref=hyperallergic.com)(2006), the Guinness World Record holder for the largest print photograph, which McCulloh made with five other artists inside a decommissioned Marine Corps hangar turned into a functioning pinhole camera. The final single gelatin silver print, which measures over 31 feet high and 111 feet wide, is not on display but this exhibition features behind-the-scenes documentation of the project and a new virtual re-staging developed using game engine technology, viewable in virtual reality or in a screen-based first-person mode.

For more information on the exhibition visit [ucrarts.ucr.edu](https://bit.ly/4gVK6V0?ref=hyperallergic.com).