We can't wait to see you at the Griffin Museum for an evening with Henry Horenstein, one of the artists featured in Common Time: American Musicality. Henry's long love of music, and especially country music, will be the topic of the presentation on Thursday November 5th, 2026, starting at 6.30pm
The evening opens with a look back at where it all began: how Henry's love of history led him to the camera, and how he came to see image making as a record of time and culture, a way to preserve the memory of people and places too easily forgotten.
© Henry Horenstein© Henry Horenstein© Henry Horenstein© Henry Horenstein
Selected footage from across Henry's filmography leads us into one of his most beloved and long-time subjects: country music, and the community of people it has the power to bring together. The films take us right onto the floors of the dance halls that inspired his iconic monograph, Honky Tonk, and laid the tracks for his most recent publication, Miles and Miles of Texas. Between clips, Henry shares what happened behind the camera, including the people, the places, and the moments that didn't make the final cut.With insightful stories, and of course a few good laughs, Henry never ceases to connect a room full of strangers.
About Henry Horenstein -
Henry Horenstein has been a professional photographer, filmmaker, teacher, and author since the 1970s.
He studied history at the University of Chicago and earned his BFA and MFA at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he studied with legends Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind.
Henry's work is collected and exhibited internationally and he has published over 40 books, including several monographs of his own work such as Miles and Miles of Texas, Honky Tonk, Histories, Show, Animalia, Humans, Racing Days, Close Relations, and many others. He has also authored Black & White Photography, Digital Photography, and Beyond Basic Photography, used by hundreds of thousands of college, university, high-school, and art school students as their introduction to photography. His Shoot What You Love serves both as a memoir and a personal history of photography over the past 50 years. His recent monographs, Speedway1972 was published by Stanley/Barker (UK) in 2022 and We Sort of People was published by Kehrer Verlag (Ger) in 2023. His newest book, Miles and Miles of Texas, was published by Honky Tonk Editions in 2025.
In recent years, Henry has been making films: Marksville, Murray, Spoke, Partners, and Blitto Underground. He is currently in production on Preacher 1996: The Lost Footage, a film about rockabilly musician Preacher Jack.
Henry is professor of photography at RISD and lives in Boston.