about
Jared Ragland (MFA, Tulane University) is a fine art and documentary photographer and former White House photo editor. Utilizing a range of photographic tactics including reportage and historical processes, filmmaking and bookmaking, and image/text relationships, his visual practice critically confronts issues of identity, marginalization, and history of place through social science, literary, and historical research methodologies. He currently serves as Instructional Assistant Professor and Photography Area Head at The University of Mississippi, where he is also an affiliate faculty member at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and photo editor of the journal, "Study the South."
Jared is the photo editor of National Geographic Books' "The President's Photographer: Fifty Years Inside the Oval Office," and he has worked on assignment for NGOs in the Balkans, the former Soviet Bloc, East Africa, and Haiti. He has served as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of South Florida's Judy Genshaft Honors College and held faculty positions at Utah State University, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the Corcoran College of Art + Design.
Jared's work has been exhibited around the world in more than 100 solo and group exhibitions, including recent shows at The Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts (Montgomery, Ala.), Kimball Art Center (Park City, Utah), University of Mississippi's Center for the Study of Southern Culture (Oxford, Miss.), Texas Tech University (Lubbock, Texas), The Do Good Fund (Columbus, Ga.), Center for Photography at Woodstock (Kingston, N.Y.), Filter Photo (Chicago, Ill.), Candela (Richmond, Va.), Birmingham Museum of Art SHIFT space (Birmingham, Ala.), The National Geographic Society (Washington, D.C.), and the Royal Geographic Society (London, UK). His photographs have been featured by The New Yorker, New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Vanity Fair Italia, and The Oxford American, and his visual ethnographic research has been published in more than two dozen social science textbooks and high-impact journals, including the first photographs to ever be published in the flagship social sciences journal, "Criminology." In 2015, Jared was named one of TIME Magazine's "Instagram Photographers to Follow in All 50 States." He is a 2020 Magnum Foundation grantee, 2020-21 Do Good Fund Artist-in-Residence, 2022 Aftermath Project Finalist, 2025 Brooklyn Darkroom Artist-in-Residence, and 2025 Center for Photographic Art Mid-Career grantee. His first film, "Some Million Miles," (co-directed with Adam Forrester) has screened in festivals around the world and was distributed nationally by PBS. A forthcoming monograph co-authored with Sara J. Winston will be published by Oregon State University's Composit Press in 2026.
During his tenure at the White House with the Bush (43) and Obama Administrations, Jared edited and designed photo books for the President, curated photographic exhibitions in the West Wing of the White House, Leica Gallery New York, Leica Gallery Berlin, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, and he was part of the editing team responsible for the release of the iconic photographs of President Obama in the Situation Room during the raid on Osama bin Laden.
He is available for guest lectures, visiting artist programs, and student mentoring.
For more information and news updates, visit jaredragland.com or follow @jaredragland.
