A PRC Speaker Series presentation with Jess T. Dugan
Sponsored by Digital Silver Imaging
April 13, 2024 : 1 – 3 pm, followed by a reception and book signing
Online and In-Person at
Lesley University, University Hall screening room
lower level, 1815 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge
For ONLINE tickets click HERE
For IN-PERSON tickets click HERE
Jess T. Dugan is an artist whose work explores issues of identity through photography, video, and writing. They received their MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago, their Master of Liberal Arts in Museum Studies from Harvard University, and their BFA in Photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Dugan’s work has been widely exhibited and is in the permanent collections of more than 50 museums, including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the International Center of Photography, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the St. Louis Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and the Library of Congress.
Dugan’s monographs include Look at me like you love me (MACK, 2022), To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults (Kehrer Verlag, 2018) and Every Breath We Drew (Daylight Books, 2015). They are the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, an ICP Infinity Award, and were selected by the Obama White House as an LGBT Artist Champion of Change. Dugan’s commercial and editorial clients include the ACLU Magazine, Airbnb, The Guardian, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, and TIME. Dugan teaches workshops at venues including the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, CO, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, and Filter Photo in Chicago, IL. In 2015, they co-founded the Strange Fire Collective to highlight work made by women, people of color, and LGBTQ artists. For the 2020-2021 academic year, Dugan was the Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Teaching Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis.
“My creative practice centers around an exploration of identity—particularly gender and sexuality—through photography, video, and writing. Drawing from my experience as a queer, non-binary person, my work is motivated by an existential need to understand and express myself and to connect with others. My intention is to create work that facilitates intimacy and encourages empathy, understanding, and critical conversations about identity and contemporary social life. As I pursue these aims, I continually explore what it means to live authentically and how visual representation—particularly photographic portraiture—plays a powerful role in that process. Formally, I use a medium-format camera, natural light, and a slow working method to combine a traditional style of photographing with contemporary subject matter. My work does not attempt to provide definitive answers; rather, it invites viewers to engage with others in an intimate, meaningful way, requiring them to reflect on their own identities in the process.”
Thank you to Digital Silver Imaging (DSI) for sponsoring this program. Digital Silver Imaging (DSI) is the only lab in the world producing the DSI Digital Silver Print®. This process allows for direct printing of B&W digital images on REAL silver gelatin, light sensitive photo paper. Digital Silver Imaging also crafts museum quality color pigment prints, as well as digitization, art reproduction and print finishing and framing services. Digital Silver Imaging has printed, framed, and delivered prints for exhibitions through out the USA and internationally to the Boston MFA, Philadelphia Art Museum, Chicago Art Institute, MOMA, Paris Photo, and the Musée de la Photographie Belgium to name only a few.