2026 SPE Annual ConferenceSpeakers

Melissa Nunez

Friday, March 20, 2026 @ 9:00am, Atlanta 2

Reframing Collegiate Photography Education

Melissa Nuñez is a Lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin, teaching darkroom photography. Her work examines landscapes altered by human activity, hazardous waste, and climate change. Through her art practice and pedagogy, Nuñez... read more

Heather O'Brien Takahashi

Friday, March 20, 2026 @ 4:00pm, Atlanta 1

water is never still: ruminations on water politics & poetics in Lebanon

Heather M. O'Brien-Takahashi is an artist, filmmaker and Assistant Professor at SIUC. She works in film/video and installation and her work has been exhibited at venues such as ICP New York, San Francisco Camerawork, Baxter... read more

Deborah Orloff

Friday, March 20, 2026 @ 9:00am, Atlanta 4

Cut Time: Collage and the Afterlives of Photographs

Deborah Orloff is a Professor and Head of Photography at the University of Toledo. Her current projects explore lost histories and the ephemerality of memory. The recipient of dozens of awards, Orloff's work has been... read more

Vesna Pavlovic

Thursday, March 19, 2026 @ 3:00pm, Georgia 12

Woven Wind

Vesna Pavlovic, from Belgrade, Serbia, holds the assistant professor of art position at Vanderbilt University. She has exhibited widely, with numerous solo and exhibitions. Her exhibition Vesna Pavlovic: Projected Histories will be presented at the... read more

Michèle Pearson Clarke Pearson Clarke

Friday, March 20, 2026 @ 10:00am, Georgia 7

A Welcome Weight on My Body: Affect, Black Visuality and Analogue Photography

Michèle Pearson Clarke is a Trinidad-born visual artist working primarily in video and photography. Clarke served as the second Photo Laureate for the City of Toronto (2019-2022), and she holds an MFA in Documentary Media... read more

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Jamie Pittinos

Friday, March 20, 2026 @ 9:00am, Atlanta 1

The Auger and The Augment: Image Release as Transsexual Cataclysm

By using corruptive and augmentative processes to alter the theoretical biology of their photographs, Jamie Pittinos explores how both chemistry and the body are transmutable and nonbinary. read more

Tara Pixley

Thursday, March 19, 2026 @ 12:00pm, Atlanta 2

Photography Ethics in the Classroom

Tara Pixley is a queer, Jamaican-American photojournalist and scholar whose work frames race, gender, climate futures, LGBTQ+ and immigrant communities through a solutions lens. read more

Alice Proujansky

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

Looking Together: Aperture On Sight Curriculum

Alice Proujansky is a photographer looking at family labor: birth, work, motherhood and identity.

Her book, "Hard Times are Fighting Times," available from Gnomic Book, is a project about the legacy of radical activism... read more

Kanishka Puri

Saturday, March 21, 2026 @ 9:00am, Atlanta 1

Interspecies Collaboration - A case for an ecological feminist future

Kanishka is an NYC-based artist and writer, who works with non-human biological systems to further her research in eco-feminist futures. By proposing radical solidarities with her ecological allies and asserting the position of women as... read more

Jordan Putt

Friday, March 20, 2026 @ 2:30pm, Atlanta 1

The Blue of Distance

Jordan Putt is an artist whose work responds to issues of place, identity, and community. His work has been exhibited in the Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson; and Filter Space, Chicago; among others. Jordan... read more

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