Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Photography Network is committed to ensuring that our communal intellectual space, including our public events and written materials, are areas for the free exchange of ideas, including critical assessments of photography’s historical and ongoing engagements with racist ideologies. The Board acknowledges photography’s powerful legacy as a tool for discrimination and will not shrink from addressing it. We recognize that the organization’s mission to seek, locate, and identify networks, including those at the foundation of global exchange, will entail direct contact with the networks of discrimination built into anthropological and colonial conquests as well as into institutional systems of surveillance. As a Board, we condemn cultural and institutional racism, as well as the brutality targeting many people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, and other marginalized groups. We will continue to work to create diversity, equity, and inclusion in our programming and membership.

As a new organization, the Board would like to hear from Photography Network membership about whether you want to see us participating in political discussions and/or how you would like us to approach the continued instances of institutional racism within the United States and broader global community. Please email your responses to photography.network.board@gmail.com subject line “DEI Statement.” Your thoughts will guide our Board discussions on subject matter for public lectures, affiliations with other institutions, and the application of future awards.