MURRAY LEMLEY: FIFTY YEARS OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND DESIGN
July 3, 2025 – January 4, 2026
The Ruth and Seymour Landfield Atrium, Xcel Energy Gallery, and
Starion Bank Gallery

Curatorial Public Tour: Thursday, August 7, 6:00 - 6:45PM, Free

Fifty Years of Photography and Design is a retrospective exhibition celebrating Lemley’s
artistic career. The exhibit features a wide range of imagery, including extensive black-andwhite
analogue street photography from Europe in the 1970s and ’80s, documentary portrait
studies of people from his hometown of Hope, powerful portraits of Native Americans on the
Fort Berthold Reservation, and a radical transition in later years to creating modern Polaroid
images he calls “STREET COLLAGE GRAFFITI.” With this more recent work, he has, in one
sense, returned to the streets he haunted in Europe in the 1970s—but in vivid color and with a
new point of view and style.

After leaving his home on the family farm near Hope, Lemley studied architecture at North
Dakota State University, but after disagreements with his design professor, he shifted his
focus to photography, journalism, graphic design, and anti-establishment activism. This
journey inspired him to launch three independent magazines, work in radio, and edit the
controversial yearbook The Last Picture Book, which famously omitted the name of the
university from its cover and led to a temporary discontinuation of yearbooks at NDSU.
Despite amassing double the required credits for a degree, his political activism resulted in
the administration refusing to grant him a diploma.

Lemley’s photography career took off after two pivotal experiences in the early ’70s:
photographing for the Concordia College May Seminars Abroad and attending the Apeiron
Photo Workshops in New York, which deepened his creative vision and marked a shift from
photojournalism to more artistic photography. His design career flourished as well, working
at Atomic Press in Seattle and later in Amsterdam, where he designed books for artists and
photographers. After the years in Seattle and San Francisco, Lemley moved to Amsterdam
in the early ’90s and has lived primarily in Europe ever since. During his early years there,
Lemley worked at many things—from construction to graphic design and art. He managed an
art gallery for a prolific painter and designed eight books for artists and photographers, many
of which are featured in this retrospective exhibition at Plains Art Museum. Lemley has had
several exhibitions of his photography at the Plains as well as at Suzanne Biederberg Gallery,
Ververs Gallery, and Zamen Art Gallery.

Plains Art Museum thanks our generous PlainsArt4All members, donors, and Organizational Partners for their support. Additional support is provided by The McKnight Foundation; FM Area Foundation; The Arts Partnership, with support from the cities of Fargo, Moorhead, and West Fargo; The FUNd at Plains Art Museum; and the North Dakota Council on the Arts, which receives funding from the North Dakota Legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is also provided by Art Bridges Foundation’s Access for All program.

August Exhibition Tour

By Plains Art Museum

August Exhibition Tour

Murray Lemley: Fifty Years of Photography and Design