Photo credit: Maglie Guérin
Deborah Bright is a Brooklyn-based artist. Her work has been recognized with exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Fogg Museum, Harvard; ArtSpace, New Haven; Leslie-Lohman Museum, New York; Artists Space, New York; Art in General, New York; Katonah Museum of Art, New York; Bernard Toale Gallery, Boston; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Schwules Museum, Berlin; Museet for Fotokunst, Copenhagen; Nederlands Foto Instituut, Rotterdam; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa; Vancouver Art Gallery. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA; Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, NYC; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; Boston Athenaeum; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University; Binghamton University Art Museum; California Museum of Photography, Riverside and the RISD Museum of Art
Bright has received numerous grants, fellowships and awards for her art and writing, including a Research Fellowship in Photography/Media Studies from Plymouth University; Artist In Residence, CEPA Gallery, Buffalo; Mary Ingraham Bunting Fellowship, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study; David and Reva Logan Award for writing on photography and grants from the Massachusetts Arts Council, New England Foundation for the Arts, Art Matters, and a Visual Forums Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
In 1998, Bright published The Passionate Camera: photography and bodies of desire, a groundbreaking collection of images and writings on photography and queer politics that was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. She currently serves on the board of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. Bright received an MFA from the Committee on Art & Design at the University of Chicago and taught in studio programs in Chicago, Boston, Providence and New York. Prior to her appointment as Chair of Fine Arts at Pratt Institute (2012-2017), she held a joint appointment as Professor of Photography and History of Art/Visual Culture at the Rhode Island School of Design where she served as Acting Dean of Fine Arts.