Professor of Modern Culture and Media and Comparative Literature, film essayist and curator of archives and exhibitions. Her books include: Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism (Verso, 2019), Civil Imagination: The Political Ontology of Photography (Verso, 2012), The Civil Contract of Photography (Zone Books, 2008) and From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947-1950 (Pluto Press 2011). Among her films: Un-documented: Undoing Imperial Plunder (2019), Civil Alliances, Palestine, 47-48 (2012). Among her exhibitions Errata (Tapiès Foundation, 2019, HKW, Berlin, 2020), and Enough! The Natural Violence of New World Order, (F/Stop photography festival, Leipzig, 2016).

Fia Backström attended University of Stockholm and Columbia University for her undergraduate degree and received her MFA eq. in photography at Konstfack Royal College of Arts and Craft in Stockholm. She works in a wide array of mediums, such as performance, photography, text, typography and layout, installation, objects and live events. Her work has been exhibited at numerous international exhibitions. Backström represented Sweden in the Venice Biennale 2011 and was included the Whitney Biennial 2008. She was the artist chosen for the Artist’s Institute season of fall 2015. Other exhibitions include MoMA, White Columns, Artists Space and The Kitchen, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; the Serpentine Gallery, London; The Baltic, Newcastle; Tranzit, Prague; Centre George Pompidou, Paris; and Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Greene Naftali and Murray Guy galleries, New York. A monograph of her work was produced for her representation in Venice. Her writings have also been published in magazines such as Artforum, Art on Paper, Pacemaker, and North Drive Press. She has received grants from Iaspis, Stockholm, Sweden; Cneai in Paris; and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York. Backström has also been on the faculty of Princeton University, and has taught at Columbia University graduate program, LUCAD Lesley University, and School of Visual Arts. She has lectured widely on her work and has been a visiting artist in schools such as NYU, Yale University, Rhode Island School of Design and MICA.

Pradeep Dalal is a Mumbai-born artist based in New York. His solo show was recently at Sala Diaz in San Antonio. His work has been exhibited at Callicoon Fine Arts, Higher Pictures, International Center of Photography, Murray Guy, New York Public Library, Orchard, PS122, and sepiaEYE in New York, the Miami-Dade County Library, Aljira in Newark, Tart Gallery in San Francisco and the Fine Arts Gallery at San Francisco State University, Franklin Street Works in Stamford, Blackpearl Gallery and the Sumner School Museum in Washington, DC, and internationally at Galerie Duboys in Paris, Galeria Arroyo de la Plata in Mexico, Chatterjee and Lal in Mumbai, Vadhera Gallery in New Delhi and Galleria de Arte in Havana, among others. His photographs were included in TAKE on Art, BOMB, Grey Room, Blind Spot, Cabinet, and Rethinking Marxism. His artist book “Bhopal, MP” was excerpted in the book “Chandigarh is in India,” and his essay “A Bifocal Frame of Reference” was published in “Western Artists and India.” He is the co-chair of the Photography MFA at Bard College and directs the Andy Warhol Foundation’s Arts Writers Grant Program. He holds an MFA from ICP/Bard College and a MArch from MIT.

Leslie Hewitt’s work combines photographic compositions comprised of political, social, and personal materials, which result in multiple histories embedded in sculptural, architectural, and abstract forms. Mundane objects and structures open into complex systems of knowledge. Her formal approach considers the fragile nature of quotidian life and its significance to collective history and political consciousness in contemporary art. Hewitt studied at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, the Yale University School of Art, and at New York University, where she was a Clark Fellow in the Africana and Visual Culture Studies programs. She was included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial and the recipient of the 2008 Art Matters research grant to the Netherlands. Hewitt has held residencies at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the American Academy in Berlin, Germany amongst others. Hewitt was part of the faculty at Barnard College in the department of Art History from 2012–2017, where she was actively engaged in the development of The Harlem Semester: A Community Partnership for Social Justice Pedagogy. Currently, she is part of the faculty of the School of Art at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and co-organizes the Cooper Union School of Art Intra-Disciplinary Lecture Series with curator and writer Omar Berrada.

Matt Keegan is a New York-based artist. He recently presented his first public sculpture in Court Square Park in Long Island City. Commissioned by Sculpture Center, NY, this work was on view from May to August of this year. Earlier this year, Keegan had a solo show titled “Use Your Words” at Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco, and a two-person exhibition with the work of Corita Kent at Potts, Los Angeles. He was subject of a solo exhibition at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (2017–2018); Participant Inc., New York, NY (2017); Grazer Kunstverein, Graz, Austria (with Kay Rosen); Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX (with Kay Rosen, both 2016). He has been included in notable recent group exhibitions including “The Artist’s Museum” at The ICA Boston; “The Sun Placed in the Abyss” at the Columbus Museum of Art; “Reconstructions: Recent Photographs and Video from the Met Collection” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and “Storylines: Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim” at the Guggenheim, New York. Keegan is full-time faculty in the Painting & Printmaking Department at the Yale School of Art.

Gelare Khoshgozaran is an undisciplinary artist and writer who, in 2009 was transplanted from street protests in a city of four seasons to the windowless rooms of the University of Southern California where aesthetics and politics were discussed in endless summers. Her films, video essays, installations and performances have been presented in solo and group exhibitions at the New Museum, Queens Museum, Eyebeam, the Hammer Museum, LACE, LAXART, Human Resources, Articule (Montreal), Beursschouwburg (Brussels) and Pori Art Museum (Pori, Finland). Her essays and interviews on art and culture have been published and are forthcoming in contemptorary (co-founder), The Brooklyn Rail, Parkett, X-TRA, Art Practical, The Enemy, Ajam Media Collective and Temporary Art Review, amongst others. The recipient of a Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant (2015) and an Art Matters Award (2017), she was recently the Art Council Visiting Assistant Professor at UCLA Design and Media Arts, and is currently artist in residence at Yarat Contemporary Art Space in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Anouk Kruithof is a visual artist whose multilayered, interdisciplinary approach encompasses photography, sculpture, installation, artists’ books, text, performance, video, animation, websites, and interventions in the public domain. Her work has been exhibited internationally at Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; FOAM, Amsterdam; La Boverie, Liege; MBAL, Switzerland; He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China; Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow; Erarta Museum, St. Petersburg; Daegu Culture and Art Center, Korea; Capitain-Petzel Gallery, Berlin; Kunst im Tunnel, Düsseldorf; Temporare Kunsthalle, Berlin; Autocenter Berlin; ICP, New York; Museum Hedendaagse Kunst De Domijnen, Sittard, Netherlands; Galerie Escougnou-Cetraro, Paris; Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam; MARCA, Catanzaro, Italy; and MAMAC, Liege, among others. Kruithof received the Volkskrant Beeldende Kunstprijs in 2016, the Meijburg Art Commission in 2015, the Charlotte Köhler Prize in the Netherlands in 2014, an Infinity Award of the International Center for Photography in New York in 2012, and the Jury Grand Prize of Festival International de Mode et de Photographie in Hyères in 2011. Her artists’ books include Automagic; Neutral; The Bungalow; Untitled (I’ve taken too many photos / I’ve never taken a photo); Pixel-stress; A head with wings; USA, Lang zal ze leven / Happy birthday to you; The daily exhaustion; Playing Borders, this contemporary state of mind; Becoming Blue; and The black hole. Kruithof is co-creator, director, and jury member of The Anamorphosis Prize, which awards $10,000, no strings attached, to the creator of the best self-published photo book from the previous year. The prize was launched for the first time in spring 2015 and has celebrated three editions so far.

Julie Pochron was born in Chicago, Illinois and moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1987 to study photography at Pratt Institute. She has been teaching at Pratt Institute since 1998 and is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor - CCE. She has had solo exhibitions at Peter Madero Gallery, New York and Safe-T Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. Selected works from Umami (Safe-T Gallery, 2008) were included in “Auto Focus: The Self-Portrait in Contemporary Photography” by Susan Bright (Monacelli Press, 2010). Notable works were featured in the exhibition “Coming Together; Surviving Sandy,” 1 Year (Dedalus Foundation, New York, NY, 2013). Her work was included in the exhibition “Her Wherever” (Halsey Mckay Gallery, East Hampton, NY, 2016). Pochron owns and operates Pochron Studios LLC, a photographic printing studio catering to exhibition analog and digital type c-prints for artists, galleries, and museums. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Josephine Pryde is an artist working in Berlin, where since 2008, she is also Professor for Contemporary Art and Photography at the University of the Arts, Berlin. She has been making exhibitions since the late 1980s and photography remains central to that practice. Pryde has also published texts throughout her career, often in the journal Texte zur Kunst. Her most recent solo exhibitions are “In Case My Mind Is Changing,” Simon Lee Gallery London, November 2018, and “Is It Coping, How Adapting,” at A Certain Level of Incoherence, Porto, September 2019. In November 2019, she will be exhibiting at Mumok, Vienna, in the exhibition ”Objects Recognized In Flashes,” together with Michele Abeles, Annette Kelm and Eileen Quinlan, curated by Matthias Michalka. Pryde’s work is held in collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and the British Council. In 2016, she was nominated for the Turner Prize.

Stephanie Syjuco works in photography, sculpture, and installation, moving from handmade and craft-inspired mediums to digital editing. Born in the Philippines in 1974, Syjuco received her MFA from Stanford University and BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She is the recipient of a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2009 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors award. She is featured in Season 9 of the acclaimed PBS documentary series “Art21: Art in the Twenty-First Century”. Recent exhibitions include “Being: New Photography 2018” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, “Public Knowledge,” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and “This Site is Under Revolution” at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. Her work has been exhibited widely, including at MoMA/PS1, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, ZKM Center for Art and Technology, the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, The 12th Havana Biennial, and the 2015 Asian Art Biennial (Taiwan), among others. A long-time educator, she has taught at Stanford University, The California College of the Arts, The San Francisco Art Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, and is an Assistant Professor in Sculpture at the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in Oakland, California.

Sara VanDerBeek was born in Baltimore in 1976 and lives and works in New York. She has had one-person exhibitions at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Baltimore Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Fondazione Memmo, Rome; and Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Kunsthalle Berlin; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Morgan Library and Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

(MFA Pratt 1979), PhD is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and has an affiliated appointment with the College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Social & Cultural, Africana Studies, where she teaches courses on photography and imaging, iconicity, and cultural histories visualizing the black body, women, and gender. She received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Willis is also the author of Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present; and co-author of The Black Female Body A Photographic History; Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery; and Michelle Obama: The First Lady in Photographs (both titles a NAACP Image Award Winner). Professor Willis’s curated exhibitions include: “In Pursuit of Beauty” at Express Newark; “Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits” at the International Center of Photography and “Reframing Beauty: Intimate Moments” at Indiana University. Since 2006 she has co-organized thematic conferences exploring imaging the black body in the West such as the conference titled Black Portraiture[s]. She has appeared and consulted on media projects including documentary films such as Through A Lens Darkly and Question Bridge: Black Males, a transmedia project, which received the ICP Infinity Award 2015, and American Photography, a PBS Documentary. A photographer and curator, Willis was born in Philadelphia and currently she is based in New York City. Her website address is debwillisphoto.com and her Instagram contact is @debwillisphoto.

Carmen Winant is an artist, writer, and the Roy Lichtenstein Endowed Chair of Studio Art at The Ohio State University. She received her BA from UCLA and Master’s degrees in Critical Studies and Fine Arts from the California College of the Arts in 2011. Winant's recent projects have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Sculpture Center, The Columbus Museum of Art, and The Wexner Center of the Arts. She is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in photography.

Joanna Zylinska is a writer, educator, curator and artist. She is Professor of New Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she recently launched a research/practice unit called The Photo Lab. The author of seven books—including The End of Man: A Feminist Counterapocalypse (University of Minnesota Press, 2018, open access version available) and Nonhuman Photography (MIT Press, 2017)—she has also co-edited Photomediations: An Open Book and Photomediations: A Reader as part of Europeana Space, a grant funded by the European Union’s ICT Policy Support Programme. In 2013 she was Artistic Director of Transitio_MX05 ‘Biomediations’, the biggest Latin American new media festival, which took place in Mexico City. Her own art practice involves experimenting with different kinds of photomedia.