2026 SPE Annual ConferenceSpeakers

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Sonja Langford

Saturday, March 21, 2026 @ 2:30pm, Atlanta 2

Re-Remembering: Photography at the Intersection of Archive, Memory, and Identity

Sonja Langford (b. 1994) is an artist and researcher from the American South. An MFA candidate at the University of Connecticut with a BA in Art History from UNC Charlotte, her work spans photography, bookmaking,... read more

Jiayi Liang

Friday, March 20, 2026 @ 3:00pm, Atlanta 1

Across the Long Season: Image-making as Labor, Resistance and Reclamation

Jiayi Liang is a Chinese lens-based artist exploring feminism, trauma, and photography. Through photo cutouts and landscapes, she examines how East Asian women's bodies are shaped by patriarchal structures. Liang is an MFA candidate at... read more

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Montenez Lowery

Friday, March 20, 2026 @ 2:30pm, Georgia 7

A Darktown Cakewalk

Montenez Lowery is a multidisciplinary Black American artist working in Atlanta, GA, pursuing a photography degree at Georgia State University. His practice focuses on community, intimacy, and the Black experience. Utilizing pinhole photography, film photography,... read more

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Ken Marchionno

Friday, March 20, 2026 @ 9:00am, Macon

Social Practice: Navigating Academia

Ken Marchionno is a Los Angeles-based artist, writer, and curator whose internationally exhibited, socially engaged work blends photography, digital media, and community collaboration. He's taught and spoken globally, worked with leading fashion photographers, published widely,... read more

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Nika McKagen

Friday, March 20, 2026 @ 2:30pm, Atlanta 5

Photography as Invocation: Mysticism, Gender, and the Act of Self-Authorization

Nika McKagen works with traditional wet darkroom photography, sculpture, and textile. Her work explores the sublime experiences that tend to occur at the edges of worlds, cultures, and languages, focusing on the intersections between digital... read more

Shanna Merola

Thursday, March 19, 2026 @ 2:00pm, Atlanta 4

Reframing the Lens: Identity, Dialogue, and Digital Pedagogy in the Photography

Thursday, March 19, 2026 @ 3:00pm, Atlanta 3

Love Canal; Evidence of Injury

Shanna Merola is an artist, photojournalist and legal worker. In addition to her studio practice, she has been a human rights observer during political uprisings across the country - from the struggle for water rights... read more

Harrison Moenich

Thursday, March 19, 2026 @ 2:00pm, Athens

Reflecting the Times: Image-Making and Education in the Shadow of Genocide

Harrison Moenich is an artist living and working in Richmond, Virginia. They received their BFA's from Virginia Commonwealth University in both Film Making and Photography in 2011 and their MFA in Photography from Cranbrook Academy... read more

Mariah Moneda

Thursday, March 19, 2026 @ 2:00pm, Macon

Catalysts for Community: Kapwa and the Banana Tree

Mariah Moneda (b.1997) is an interdisciplinary artist and educator. She draws on her lived experience as a first-generation born, Filipino-American woman, and utilizes her practice as a tool to explore the liminal space between herself,... read more