The MassArt Graduate Programs and Photography department are pleased to welcome Visiting Artist, Jess T. Dugan and Visiting Curator, Charlotte Cotton as speakers of the Fall 2026 Photography Lecture Series. Please join us in the Tower Auditorium at 6:00pm on Tuesday, September 15.

Jess T. Dugan is an artist whose work explores identity and the complexities of the human condition. While their practice is centered around photography, it also includes writing, video, sound, drawing, and installation. Their work is regularly exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collections of over seventy museums.

Charlotte Cotton is a curator and writer who explores photography and visual culture. She is the author of key books that chart photographic practices in this century, including Photography is Magic (2015) and The Photograph as Contemporary Art (2004).

This will be a discussion between photographer Jess T. Dugan and writer Charlotte Cotton in regards to their Love Pictures collaboration, published by Radius Books in 2026.

Love Pictures is centered around a series of conversations between the two focusing on core themes that inform Dugan’s practice, including gender and identity, family and politics, writing and language, the book as object, and the dynamics of the exhibition space.

These initial dialogues then prompted subsequent conversations with others in Dugan’s and Cotton’s respective communities: friends, colleagues, mentors, and subjects of Dugan’s work—including Dawoud Bey, Kelli Connell, and Dorothy Moss, among others. Transcriptions of these intimate and in-depth exchanges are woven with the first comprehensive survey of Dugan’s work in book form.

All Photography lectures are free and open to the public. 

Questions? Contact gradprogram@massart.edu

Image detail: Jess T. Dugan, Melissa and Donika, 2023.