Photography, revolution, representation. Through leading seminars, curating panels, and consulting services, Women Picturing Revolution (WPR) co-creators Lesly Deschler Canossi and Zoraida Lopez-Diago are reclaiming and retelling history in a manner that is both radical and necessary. By highlighting the work of woman photographers who have documented conflicts, crises, and revolutions in private realms and public spaces, WPR sheds light on personal and political experiences that are often overlooked or underrepresented. From images made as a response to forced silence, oppression, and the inability to act, to well-known visual journalists documenting upheaval, Lesly and Zoraida, along with WPR participants, examine not only the photographs but also the conditions under which women make images. 

​

Lesly Deschler Canossi (she/her) is a photography educator and co-founder of Women Picturing Revolution. She holds an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she focused on the museological object’s role in constructing culture. She is a faculty member at the International Center of Photography (ICP) and has lectured at Columbia University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Lamar Dodd School of Art in Cortona, Italy, and the Tate Modern, among others. Along with Zoraida Lopez-Diago, she edited Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation: Another Way of Knowing, Leuven University Press. Her ongoing personal photographic practice, Domestic Negotiations (2012-present), and teaching project, Into the Fold: Artist / Mother Identity (2019-present) explore autonomy, loss, and feminist mothering.

​

Zoraida Lopez-Diago stands at the intersection of visual, social, and environmental justice; she is a photographer, curator, activist, and co-founder of Women Picturing Revolution (WPR). Her photographs focuses on themes of gender, race, incarceration, and migration and have been exhibited at institutions throughout the US and Latin America. She has lectured at Harvard University, the Tate Modern, and La Universidad de Antioquia (Colombia), among others. Zoraida is currently writing an essay, paired with images, on the intersection of photography, the Black body, and nature. She co-curated “Picturing Black Girlhood,” an exhibition from February to August 2022, as part of the conference “Black Portraiture[s] VII: Play and Performance” at Rutgers University-Newark and with Deschler Canossi, co-edited Black Matrilineage, Photography and Representation: Another Way of Knowing, published by Leuven University Press, distributed by Cornell University Press in North America.

May 24, 2019

Women Picturing Revolution at B&H for International Women's Week 

​

Weaving in the UN 2019 theme of “Think Equal, Build Smart, Innovate for Change” WPR look into how female photographers forge paths to progress exploring visual journalists and lens-based artists translate social and political conditions that impact women and girls into potent and effective imagery. 

​

​

​

May 24, 2018

Women Picturing Revolution in conversation with photographer Lola Flash

Lola Flash and WPR examine the role photography plays in documenting LGBTQ communities in both public and personal spaces at BAXTER ST / Camera Club of New York. 

September 9, 2017

Women Picturing Revolution in conversation with Catherine Morris, co-organizer of We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85, Brooklyn Museum

​

A conversation on how photography proposes acts of everyday resistance in connection with race, invisibility, mothering, and art at the Lightfield Photography Festival, Hudson, NY

March 11, 2017

Women Picturing Revolution: Focus on Africa and the African-Diaspora  

​

One Day Seminar at Columbia University Institute for Research in African-American Studies (IRAAS). This seminar included in-person artist talks with Nona Faustine and Ayana V. Jackson.  Click here for more info.

January 21, 2017

Women's March  Instagram Guest Contributor

​

Women Picturing Revolution documents the Women's March in NYC for the International Center of Photography's (ICP) and The School at ICP Instagram Pages. Follow us! 

November 5, 2016

Women Picturing Revolution: One Day Seminar at the ICP School

A one-day seminar that surveyed female photographers who have documented war, conflicts, crises, and revolutions in private realms and public spaces. This seminar included an artist talk that connected our class with Laura Doggett of Another Kind of Girl and Khaldiya, a Syrian girl who made a film about her life in the Za’atari refugee camp. The seminar also included an artist talk with photographer Sheila Pree Bright and a special screening of her film 1960Now. 

December 1, 2020

Tate Modern, London

Fast Forward: How Do Women Work

​

​

Women Picturing Revolution presented on the forthcoming book Representation of Black Motherhood & Photography

October 27, 2018

Women Picturing Revolution: One Day Seminar at the ICP School

A one-day seminar that surveyed female photographers who have documented war, conflicts, crises, and revolution in private realms and public spaces. Visiting curator Yukiko Yamagata, Acting Interim Director for the Open Society Foundations Documentary Photography Project and visiting artist, Magnum photographer Diana Markosian. 

October 24, 2017

Women Picturing Revolution presents a survey of female photographers who have documented war, conflicts, crises, and revolution in private realms and public spaces with an emphasis on interactive media. 

​

Maryland College of Art (MICA) Graduate Photographic and the Electronic Media Studies Program 

April 21, 2017 

Interview with L. Jonathan Collier of Black Perspectives

Published interview with Black Perspectives, the leading online platform for public scholarship on global black thought, history, and culture. Click here to read.

March 6, 2017

Interview with Humble Arts Foundation co-founder Jon Feinstein 

​

Published interview on Humble Arts Foundation blog discussing upcoming seminar at Columbia University and what's in store for Women Picturing Revolution. Click here to read.

November 16, 2016

Women Picturing Revolution Panel Discussion at the International  Center of Photography 

​

This panel, with Donna De Cesare, Tanya Habjouqa,   and Muriel Hasbun, moderated by Grace Aneiza Ali, was created by WPR founders by  Lesly Deschler Canossi and Zoraida Lopez-Diago. View the recording of this event. 

July 21, 2016

Interview with the International Center of Photography (ICP)  

​

Published interview in the International Center of Photography's Fall Catalogue discussing upcoming ICP seminar and panel.  Click here to read and learn more. 

PURCHASE BOOK

"This edited volume contributes to recent projects centering Black reproductive rights and practices of care in Black communities on a practical and scholarly level. With the focus on photography and representation, the anthology provides a focus that is in its scope underrepresented and underexplored. The mixture of interviews, academic essays, poetry, interviews and other forms of writing and carefully curated color plates at the end of the volume provide not only a refreshing and innovative format to cover the wide and diverse range of approaches but also provides an important methodological contribution to existing scholarship."

-Henriette Gunkel, Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Contributing artists: Nydia Blas, Samantha Box, Renee Cox, Andrea Chung, Nona Faustine, Adama Delphine Fawundu, vanessa german, Ayana V. Jackson, Lebohang Kganye, Deana Lawson, Qiana Mestich, Marcia Michael, Zanele Muholi, Wangechi Mutu, Keisha Scarville, Mickalene Thomas, Mary Sibande, Carrie Mae Weems, Deborah Willis. 

​

Contributing authors: Tomi Akitunde (founder and editor-in-chief of mater mea), Grace Aneiza Ali (New York University), Emily Brady (University of Nottingham), Lesly Deschler Canossi (Women Picturing Revolution), Nicole J. Caruth (independent curator), Haile Eshe Cole (University of Connecticut), Atalie Gerhard (Saarland University), Kellie Carter Jackson (Wellesley College), Rachel Lobo (York University), Zoraida Lopez-Diago (Women Picturing Revolution), Salamishah Tillet (Rutgers University), Scheherazade Tillet (A Long Walk Home), Brie McLemore (University of California, Berkeley), Renée Mussai (Autograph London), Marly Pierre-Louis (independent curator), Jonathan Michael Square (Parsons School of Design), Susan Thompson (independent curator), Jennifer Turner (Hollins University), Sasha Turner (Johns Hopkins University), Rhaisa Kameela Williams (Princeton University)

​

Cover art by Andrea Chung / Cover design Daniel Benneworth-Gray

​

 Shipping in the US through Cornell University Press 
 Worldwide shipping through Leuven University Press 

CONTACT US

WPR is available for consultancy services, seminars, lectures, panel discussions, and presentations.

Please contact us at

womenpicturingrevolution@gmail.com 

more information.