RISD Photography

RISD Grad Show 2026 brings together new work by emerging artists and designers across RISD’s graduate programs, featuring thesis projects developed through years of research, experimentation, and production. Our Photo MFA artists @alexanikol @ol_eggart @find.some.time @ginnyhanusik @tomorrowblakechapman @wenzhang215 will also be presenting their newest works in the exhibition we’d love to see you there! @anotherstevesmith @brian_ulrich @lainerettmer @enlargedheart May 21–30Opening Reception: Wednesday, May 20, 6–8 PMRI Convention Center, Halls C & DOne Sabin Street, Providence Open daily 12–5 PM (10–5 on May 30)#risdalumni #risd#artexhibitions #graduation

RISD Folk! Join Us Saturday Night, May 16th for live music at the Taproom, with: @bussykweenpowertrip @hiloisthedestroyer @zackplastic @denim_band @buried_or_burned @aqualambrecords @risdsculpturestudents @risdpainting @risdglass @risd_gd @risd_ceramics @risdapparel

Introducing Jake Benzinger (@jake_benzinger ), a 1st year MFA candidate in Photography at RISD. Jake is a photography and book arts workshop instructor, content editor for Lenscratch (@lenscratch ), and the founder/director of wych elm (@wychelm.press ), an independent press creating small-run photo books, zines, and fine art ephemera.  - “Oscillating between levels of certainty and dissonance, “The Sun Danced That Day” reflects upon the way in which text and image ask for and negotiate with faith, belief, and perception. I use the camera as a tool both to document and fabricate reality, challenging how a viewer’s orientation may affect how they extend gestures of trust, reverence, and empathy. I reject the authority to discern the truthfulness or certainty of an experience as strictly objective or subjective, and suggest that it lacks a sort of fundamental empathy. I believe experience is much more nuanced, and that there should be space for experiential truth to live alongside what may be provable as objective. Dualisms often create a dangerous binary and oppositional logic, and in this context, rupture a way of experiencing and understanding life that is so tethered and intrinsic to the human experience. Considering the fluidity, intersection, and instability of memory, myth, and photography, I explore the ambiguities of certainty and mystery, and the subversion of Western cultural norms.”

@risdphto and @aqualambrecords are putting together an evening of sounds and songs in the historic RISD Taproom on May 16th. @bussykweenpowertrip @buried_or_burned @hiloisthedestroyer @denim_band @zackplastic #endofsemester #livemusic 1m

RISD Photo Lecture Series Gary Metz Lecture — Billie Mandle April 21, 7pm The Metcalf Auditorium, Providence Artist and professor at MassArt, Billie Mandle shared her work from Asunder, Stellar Skryon, and more. Free and open to the public #risdalumni @risd1877 @risdgraduatestudies @risdphto @risd_photocage

Spring 2026 RISD PHOTO LECTURE. Thursday, April 16, 7pm Metcalf Auditorium, Chace Center Tina Campt Tina Campt, a black feminist theorist of visual culture and contemporary art, is Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor of Humanities in the Department of Art and Archaeology and Visual Arts Program at Princeton University, and Director of the Princeton Atelier at the Lewis Center for the Arts. She is lead convener of the Princeton Collaboratorium for Radical Aesthetics and the Practicing Refusal Collective, and the recipient of the 2025 Photographic Studies Award from the Royal Anthropological Institute for distinguished contributions to the study of anthropology and photography. She is the author of four books: Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of Race, Gender and Memory in the Third Reich (University Michigan Press, 2004), Image Matters: Archive, Photography and the African Diaspora in Europe (Duke University Press, 2012), Listening to Images (Duke University Press, 2017), and most recently, A Black Gaze (MIT Press, 2021). Her co-edited collection, Imagining Everyday Life: Engagements with Vernacular Photography (with Marianne Hirsch, Gil Hochberg and Brian Wallis, Steidl, 2020) was named Photography Catalogue of the Year by Paris Photo and Aperture Foundation. #risdphotography #risdalumni #photography #contemporaryart Photo: courtesy of the artist

Introducing Wenhan Hu @w.h_h.u 🫟, a 1st year MFA candidate in Photography at RISD…   Wenhan Hu was born in 2001 in Hangzhou, China. He received his dual bachelor’s degrees (BS & BE) in Mechanics and Civil Engineering System from Tsinghua University, Beijing.   -   Growing up within the digital flux, his practice interrogates what he terms the “distorted mirror stage”—a condition where the formation of self is no longer a singular moment of recognition, but a perpetual, unstable process of construction under the pressure of networked gazes.   Through photography, spatial collage, and digital intervention, he constructs fragmented fields of vision that materialize this dissonance. His work seeks to render visible the friction between who we are, who we perform, and who is reflected back at us. It is within this glitch between selves that his images operate. They capture not a unified subject, but the fractures: the labor of performance, the alienation from one’s own image, and the rupture between the physical body and its digital twin.   - images © 2026 Wenhan Hu. All Rights Reserved. #photography #contemporanyart #risd #risdphoto

RISD Photo Lecture Series — Spring 2026 Rose Marie Cromwell March 31, 7pm The Metcalf Auditorium, Chase Center 20 North Main St, Providence, RI Rose Marie Cromwell is a photographer and artist exploring globalization’s impact on politics and the spiritual. Her debut book El Libro Supremo de la Suerte won the Light Work Photobook Prize and was named one of TIME’s 25 Best Photobooks of 2018. She later published Eclipse and A More Fluid Atmosphere. In 2024, she had her first solo museum exhibitions at ICA Miami, Pier 24, and The High Museum. Her work is held in major collections including The Getty, Pérez Art Museum Miami, The Norton Museum, and The Met Library. @risd_photocage @risdalumni @risdgraduatestudies @risd1877 #photography #contemparyart #artist #photobook

Spring arrives in time for #largeformatphotography #4x5 at #neutakoncanutpark in West Providence.

Opening This Week This Is The World (I made it for you) Group Exhibition March 12 – 30 ✨ Opening Reception: March 12, 6–8 PM 📍 Red Eye Gallery Design Center, 4th Floor 30 N Main St Providence, RI Featuring works in photography, sculpture, video, painting, textile, and sound. #risdexhibitions #risdsculpture #risdpainting #risdsound #contemporaryart

Duane Michals A Photography Legend Comes to RISD Thursday, March 19 6:30–7:30 pm Metcalf Auditorium 20 North Main Street Internationally-renowned photographer Duane Michals, one of the great photographic innovators of the last century, is widely known for his work with series, multiple exposures, and text. Hear Michals reflect on his long and extensive career. Presented by RISD’s Photography Department with support from the RISD Museum and Sprint Systems. @henryhorenstein @risdmuseum @risd_photocage @risd1877

Please join us tomorrow for the opening of RISD Photo’s junior show, Holding Place, from 6-8pm in the Red Eye Gallery!