On October 20th, 2022, Topical Cream hosted Aftercare at The International Center of Photography on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. 
The evening event was in honor of the ICP exhibition Close Enough: New Perspectives from 12 Women Photographers of Magnum, which presents pivotal projects in the careers of twelve contemporary women photographers of Magnum Photos, the pioneering photography collective.

The exhibition was curated by Charlotte Cotton, whose canon has explored photographic culture for over twenty-five years. For this very moving exhibition, the photographers narrate their creative journeys, providing vantage points into the extraordinary relationships they have fostered within global situations, communities, and individual subjects.

Aftercare included a talk between photographer Michele Abeles, an artist represented by 47 Canal in New York, and Topical Cream’s Director Lyndsy Welgos. The program also included a performance by Thank God for Abortion.

Abeles and Welgos discussed Abeles’s 2020 exhibition October, which dove into the subculture of mass-market Halloween decor, as well as Abeles’s reputation as a “trickster” and the open-ended nature of her work. Abeles opened up for the first time about the genesis of her iconic male nudes series and shared that she booked the models on Craigslist and photographed them alone in her New York apartment as a way to deal with general anxiety about being in an uncomfortable position with the most dangerous animal alive, the adult male.

The evening event concluded with a DJ set from art and filmmaker Maggie Lee. The libations for guests were sponsored by Deep Eddy’s Vodka. Deep Eddy offered an elevated cocktail titled “The 12” in honor of the twelve female-identifying photographers in the exhibition. The elegant cocktail was a simple concoction of Deep Eddy Lime, simple syrup, and a fresh mint sprig.