The entryway to the Atlanta Center for Photography (ACP) was a bit of a problem for artist Mo Costello.
When she was invited to show her work in a solo exhibition at the gallery located on Edgewood Avenue, Costello noticed that the threshold was raised by about three inches, preventing access for those with mobility restrictions. And so, before she could even fully consider the work that would go on the walls, she first had to fix the entryway.
Costello designed and then worked with neighboring Fred Martin Welding to craft an accessible ramp leading into the gallery. Though unpermitted, and technically less-than-legal, the ramp is successful in its mission to create better access to the space.
This accessibility is important not just for Costello, who is herself disabled and chronically ill, but also for the general public who may have otherwise been unable to enter the gallery in the first place.
“In response to the invitation to exhibit at Atlanta Center for Photography, I found myself returning, in particular, to questions of collective responsibility,” explained Costello. “More specifically, how do we create more accessible, inclusive art spaces? Urgently and with the resources at hand?”
“As a disabled, and chronically ill artist, I approach these questions primarily from lived experience. Access is not a set of standardized, predetermined requisites. Rather, it is a daily, ongoing, and necessarily shared, responsibility and practice. An imperfect, and often highly provisional, set of tools for finding one another,” she continued.
Once beyond the new ramp and inside the gallery, Costello’s work appears on small silver gelatin prints of photographs. Focusing on small details, such as clusters of staples on telephone poles, broken glass, and scenes that imply the remnants of humanity on public spaces, Costello has been working on this collection of photographs for over a decade.
The exhibit, titled “Mo Costello: Forming sounds with my mouth to approximate something that’s like a flood,” uses photography to explore topics such as equity and accessibility. She’s concerned with the “social life of objects” and considers how photography plays a role in imagining a future that is better and more equitable for all.
“I am preoccupied by a relatively consistent set of working questions. Questions I return to often,” said Costello. “How might, for example, our various practices inform and better support more equitable and accessible worlds? How do we ensure that dialogue in and around photography accounts for the social, including conditions of both production and circulation? How might the camera be engaged less as a tool of visibility and more so, an instrument for coming undone?”
In her career as a working artist and educator, Costello often brings focus to small-scale and community-oriented infrastructure dedicated to supporting visual and performing arts. She has received numerous curatorial opportunities, as well as residencies from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2022, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in 2024, and Denniston Hill, also in 2024. Originally from Seattle, Costello now lives in Athens, GA.
“In a moment when the stability of our political and institutional infrastructures feels uncertain, Mo Costello reckons with the ways in which community can be radically sustained through small-scale, informal systems of support,” opined Lindsey O’Connor, the Executive Director of the Atlanta Center for Photography.
“This work feels urgent to Atlanta Center for Photography, both because of the utilitarian functionality the wheelchair ramp brings to our new home on Edgewood Avenue and the expansive queries Costello poses around photography’s summoning potential.”
“Mo Costello: Forming sounds with my mouth to approximate something that’s like a flood” will debut with an opening reception on Thurs., Feb. 6 from 6-9 p.m. and will remain on view through April 26, 2025. Atlanta Center for Photography is located at 546 Edgewood Ave SE.
