RISD Photo

Fall 2026 RISD Photo Lecture Series

Fall 2026 RISD Photo TC Colley Lecture

Carolyn Drake
Tuesday, October 20, 2026,
Metcalf Auditorium, 6:30pm

Carolyn Drake is a photographer whose collaborative, multidisciplinary practice explores how narratives are constructed and unsettled through imagination, material intervention, and shared authorship. Her projects include Wild Pigeon, Knit Club, Men Untitled, Next Door, and Glorify Yourself. Her work is held in collections including SFMOMA, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the High Museum, and the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson. A member of Magnum Photos, Drake is a Guggenheim fellow. She is represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery and lives in Vallejo, California.

Fall 2026 RISD Photo Gary Metz Lectures

Farah Al Qasimi
Tuesday, September 22, 2026, Metcalf Auditorium, 6:00 pm
co-sponsored by RISD Painting Department

Farah Al Qasimi makes photographs, films and music. Often working with large-scale vinyl imagery and a multiplicity of photographic prints and screens, she is interested in the internet and its hierarchies of information and emotion. Al Qasimi loves the complexity of storytelling and value-building in children's cartoons, and many of her video works include primary narrators who are anthropomorphized. Through a highly collaborative practice, she has worked with hand-sewn puppets, falcons, African Land Snails, exorcists, and most recently, a Jack Sparrow impersonator. Her work is in the collections of MoMA New York, Tate Modern, Guggenheim New York and Abu Dhabi, and she has participated in residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, Delfina Foundation in London, and the Chinati Foundation in Marfa.

Birthe Piontek
Tuesday, November 10, 2026
ProvWash Auditorium, 6:30pm

Birthe Piontek is a visual artist who works in photography, installation, sculpture, and drawing. Her photographic practice explores the interconnections between photographic images, objects, history, and personal and collective memory.

Piontek’s work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in Canada, the United States, Europe, and South America and is featured in many private and public collections, such as the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the Museum of Applied Arts in Gera, Germany.

Piontek is the author of several photography books. The project The Idea of North won the Critical Mass Book Award in 2009 and was published by Photolucida in 2011. Her project Abendlied received the Edward Burtynsky Grant in 2018 and was nominated by Time Magazine as one of the best photo books in 2019. Her third book, Janus, was published in 2021, and her newest project, Zero Hour, was released in 2025. 

Piontek received her MFA from the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany. She lives in Vancouver, Canada, where she is an Associate Professor of Photography at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design.