By Julia Cumes, in collaboration with Lipe Borges
September–December 2026
Cahoon Museum of American Art, Cotuit, MA

A portrait and narrative series exploring migration, belonging, and the lives of those who now call Cape Cod home. Created through collaborative portrait sessions and in-depth interviews, the work centers dignity, agency, and the lived complexity of displacement and becoming.

Invisible Threads debuted as a solo exhibition at the Cape Cod Museum of Art (August–November 2025). The Cahoon Museum presentation marks the next phase of the project, featuring newly created portraits and an expanded body of stories. The series was shortlisted for the Global Peace Photo Award and is forthcoming as a book with Daylight Books.

By Julia Cumes
November 2023
Paris Photo Prize – State of the World Curator’s Selection
Paris, France

A photographic series examining the aftermath of Northern California’s wildfires, tracing scorched forests, collapsed structures, and the eerie stillness left behind. Rendered in a restrained, monochromatic palette, the work lingers with landscapes marked by loss and transformation. Elegy in Ashes invites viewers to sit with grief, confront the accelerating realities of climate change, and reflect on what it means to bear witness—and responsibility—in the wake of destruction.

By Julia Cumes
2016–2024

A collaborative portrait and narrative series created in close partnership with transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals on Cape Cod.

Through carefully constructed portraits and personal stories, Trans(formation) explores gender identity as lived experience—marked by courage, vulnerability, resilience, and pride—while challenging the invisibility and misconceptions that continue to shape public understanding.

Developed through a sustained, trust-based process between photographer and subject, the series has been presented in solo exhibitions at Miami University, Ohio (2022), the Cultural Center of Cape Cod, Massachusetts (2022), Pier Gallery in Provincetown (Summer 2024), and on Martha’s Vineyard, among other venues. Across these settings, Trans(formation) has fostered dialogue, visibility, and allyship through deeply human storytelling.

By Julia Cumes
2011–2012

A long-form documentary and multimedia project examining the enduring paniolo (Hawaiian cowboy) culture of Hawai‘i’s Big Island. Created over more than two years, the series follows multigenerational ranching families as they navigate a way of life shaped by land, tradition, and deep ancestral knowledge—while facing mounting pressures from climate change, economic shifts, and development.

Through photographs, interviews, music, and ambient sound, the work traces a cowboy culture that predates the American West, revealing both its resilience and its fragility. The Last of the Hawaiian Cowboys is held in the permanent collection of the American Cowboy Museum, Georgia, preserving this living history as part of the broader narrative of cowboy culture in America.