Sites of Agency | Postures Activating Studio Photography | Photographie en studio

Through historical photography ranging from early daguerreotypes to contemporary approaches, Sites of Agency examine how photographic studios have served as a place of self-fashioning, resistance, and cultural expression since the advent of the practice. Bringing together perspectives from Indigenous, Black, South Asian, and global photographic traditions, the volume reframes the studio as a site of agency rather than documentation.

Jonathan Michael Square is the Assistant Professor of Black Visual Culture at Parsons School of Design. He earned a PhD from New York University, an M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, and a B.A. from Cornell University. Karen Tam is a Canadian artist and curator who focuses on the constructions and imaginations of cultures and communities through installations in which she recreates Chinese restaurants, karaoke lounges, opium dens, curio shops, and other sites of cultural encounters. Tam holds a BFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University, an MFA in Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a PhD in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths (University of London). She lives in Montreal. Julie Crooks has served as a curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario since 2017. Her areas of expertise include vernacular photography from West Africa and the African diaspora, as well as contemporary art. In 2020, Dr. Crooks founded the AGO’ s department of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora, an initiative aimed at addressing historical omissions and underrepresentation of Africa and its diasporas through focused programming, exhibitions, and acquisitions. Andrea Kunard is Senior Curator of Photographs at the National Gallery of Canada. Alyssa Fearon is a curator, educator, and scholar. From 2020– 2025, she served as Director/Curator at Dunlop Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan, where she shaped the gallery’ s strategic and artistic vision and organized widely recognized exhibitions, including BLACK PRAIRIES, a touring exhibition honouring more than a century of Black/African-Canadian cultural production in the Prairies. She has also held roles at the Art Gallery of Ontario and Independent Curators International in New York. Deepali Dewan is the Dan Mishra Curator of Global South Asia at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. She is also the co-editor of the online, peer-reviewed journal Trans Asia Photography. Her research spans issues of colonial, modern, and contemporary visual culture of South Asia and its diasporas with a focus on histories of photography. She has published on 19th-century photographer Raja Deen Dayal, painted photographs in India, family photography as cultural practice, and contemporary lens-based artists. Sherry Farrell Racette (Mé tis/Anishinaabe Algonquin/Irish) is a Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Regina and a member of Timiskaming First Nation (Quebec). A cultural historian, artist, and curator, her work is grounded in extensive research in archives and museum collections, with a focus on Indigenous women and the recovery of aesthetic knowledge. Beadwork and stitch based practices are central to her artistic and scholarly work.