2024 SPE Annual ConferenceSpeakers

Fazilat Soukhakian

Thursday, March 21, 2024 @ 11:00am, Majestic A

Fighting for Emancipation:Iranian Activist Photography in Shaping the revolution

Fazilat Soukhakian is an Iranian artist, photographer, and scholar who is currently an Associate Professor of Photography at Utah State University. She started her career as a photojournalist in Iran and became one of the few female photojournalists in a highly patriarchal society. She moved to the United States in 2011 and received her Master of Fine Arts degree and her Ph.D. in Architectural History from the University of Cincinnati. She is a visual storyteller who reflects on her surroundings' social and political issues as a means for social change and justice. Her work depicts the stories of bravery and strength of those marginalized by society, highlighting the act of overcoming struggle and inspiring others. Fazilat's work is widely published and exhibited both nationally and internationally. She has received a multitude of awards and recognition. She was recently named a winner of the 2023 Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers, a 2022 Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 photographer, the 2022 Critical Mass Michael Reichmann Project Grant recipient, and a 2022 Utah Artist fellow.