recent highlights:





professor soukhakian, senior bfa students attend spe national conference

Mar. 21, 2024


Associate Professor Fazilat Soukhakian, center, with USUPhoto BFA students (from left) Olivia Ethington, Sam Greene, Kennedy Fry, and Kenzli Todd. 

This week, Associate Professor Fazilat Soukhakian and five USUPhoto senior BFA students are participating in the SPE National Conference in St. Louis, March 21-23.  

The students—Lele Bonizzi, Olivia Ethington, Kennedy Fry, Sam Greene, and Kenzli Todd—received travel grant support from USU’s Office of Research and the Caine College of the Arts to attend the conference, where they will share their BFA thesis portfolios with leading photographers and photo educators from around the county, attend artist talks and panels, and view exhibitions.

Professor Soukhakian will also present at the conference, delivering a paper titled, "Fighting for Emancipation: Iranian Activist Photography and Art in Shaping the Revolution."

Soukhakian, who began her photographic career as a photojournalist in Iran, will discuss the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement in Iran that followed the September 2022 killing of Mahsa Zhina Amini while Amini was held in Iranian police custody. The movement quickly evolved into a feminist revolution, led mostly by Iranian women, and aims to return women's rights and strive for gender equality. Through the veil of anonymity, Iranian artists and photographers have been able to not only express their emotions but also respond to the chaos and violence around them through creating artwork. At high risk of being arrested by the regime, they work from hidden, underground spaces and fuel the revolution with their art. Soukhakian's paper analyses how the anonymous art originating from inside Iran is now bringing focused attention to the human rights issues within the country, in contrast to what previously was labeled as “self-exoticizing” and “self-orientalizing” art. By freeing itself from the art market's demand and its interwoven complex political agendas, Iranian art today aims to bring social justice and change to its people.

SPE is the leading forum for fostering understanding of photography in all its forms and related media. SPE engages its worldwide membership and affiliated communities through a range of supportive platforms.

During the conference USUPhoto BFA students will be sharing their experience through a series of posts on the USUPhoto Instagram, @usuphoto.  





professor soukhakian opens ‘queer in utah’ at blue sky

Mar. 5, 2024


Queer in Utah


USU Associate Professor Fazilat Soukhakian’s award-winning photography project, Queer in Utah, will be exhibited at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon, opening with a public reception Thursday, March 7, 5-8pm.

Professor Soukhakian grew up in Iran, where she witnessed her LGBTQ+ friends and relatives face severe discrimination and fear—not only from the authorities but also from the community. After moving to Utah, Soukhakian says she was shocked to find that the LGBTQ+ community in certain regions of the US experienced similar struggles and challenges.

In response, Professor Soukhakian says she began the Queer in Utah project in 2019 to “help normalize the LGBTQ+ community in the conservative setting of Utah.”  Soukhakian collaborated with friends and LGBTQ+ community members, photographing couples in affectionate poses and local outdoor settings, with each portrait made in a style resembling the heteronormative engagement and family portrait photography that is widely popular across the state.

Queer in Utah will run through March 30 at Blue Sky. A digital exhibition catalog is available online. Soukhakian will give an artist talk at the gallery on Saturday, March 9 at 2pm.

Soukhakian has has received wide acclaim for Queer in Utah, both in Utah and abroad. In addition to the exhibition at Blue Sky, the project was recently exhibited at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) and will be the subject of an upcoming solo exhibition at FotoNostrum Gallery in Barcelona in April 2024.  In 2023, Soukhakian won the Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers, and Queer in Utah was listed in the Photolucida Critical Mass TOP 50 in 2022. Queer in Utah has also been featured in stories by L’OEil de la Photographie and Salt Lake City’s KSL News.

Blue Sky is one of the premiere photography galleries in the Pacific Northwest. Founded in 1975 as the Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts, Blue Sky seeks to inspire and build community between contemporary photographic artists and audiences. The gallery presents 20-25 exhibitions annually, maintains a public research library, and offers artist talks and programs.


Blue Sky is located at 122 NW 8th Avenue, Portland OR 97209. The gallery is open Wed-Sat, 12-5pm. For more information, visit: https://www.blueskygallery.org.





professor soukhakian at caa

Feb. 15, 2024

Anonymous artist; public protest, Iran; 2022

This week Professor Fazilat Soukhakian is in Chicago for the CAA annual conference where she will present a paper, “Fighting for Emancipation: How Iranian Activist Artists are Shaping the New Feminist Revolution ‘Woman, Life, Freedom,’” as part of a session “How do feminist artists care?”

In her paper, Professor Soukhakian investigates the politics of art activism and the relationship between aesthetics and politics by focusing on how young artists from across Iran have bravely and creatively responded to the chaos and violence around them—particularly in the aftermath of the Sept. 2022 arrest of Mahsa Zhina Amini.  Amini was arrested for not wearing her headscarf properly and died while in police custody. Risking their own arrest and persecution by the Iranian regime, these artists work from hidden, underground spaces to fuel revolution and awaken the collective memory of Iranian women whose bodies, minds, and lives have historically gone through many forms of torture and brutality.

CAA is the preeminent international leadership organization in the visual arts. Each year the annual conference brings together preeminent arts scholars to promote understanding through advocacy, intellectual engagement, and a commitment to the diversity.





multi-disciplinary artist jaclyn wright to visit usuphoto

Feb. 2, 2024



Multi-disciplinary artist and educator Jaclyn Wright will visit Utah State University, February 12. She will discuss her photographic practice at 2:15 p.m. during Professor Jared Ragland’s Advanced Photographic Studio class in FAV113 of USU’s Chase Fine Arts Building.

The visit is presented by the Caine College of the Arts’ Department of Art + Design and USU Photo.

In her lecture, Wright will speak about her multi-disciplinary practice and recent monograph, High Visibility (Blaze Orange). Published by GOST Books in 2023, the book focuses on Utah’s West Desert and illustrates the struggle between the natural world and its codification and the ironies of fantasies of freedom and nativism on stolen land.

"Jaclyn's work creatively incorporates archival images, in-camera collages using a large format view camera, performance, and photographic installations,” said Jared Ragland, assistant professor of photography in the CCA. “I share Jaclyn's work with my students each semester, as it critically engages issues they care deeply about—from the culture of land use to legacies of settler colonialism and late capitalism in the American West. I am delighted the USU community has an opportunity to experience Jaclyn's profoundly thoughtful studio practice.”

Wright received her MFA in Studio Art from Indiana University and currently serves as Assistant Professor of Photography at the University of Utah. Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include Filter Space (Chicago), Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (Salt Lake City), Sabine Street Studios (Houston), and SFO Museum (San Francisco). Her work has been included in collections at The Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, IL. Wright is a 2024-25 Foam Talent, a 2023 Utah Visual Arts Fellow, and was a finalist for the 2023 Aperture Portfolio Prize. Her monograph, High Visibility (Blaze Orange), is part of the USU Photobook Special Collection.

While on campus, Wright will lead studio critiques with senior BFA photography students.

Wright's lecture is free and open to the public.

For more information about Wright's work, visit jaclynrwright.com or follow @jaclynrwright on Instagram. 





prof. ragland publishes essay in southern cultures

Feb. 1, 2024


Page spread from What Has Been Will Be Again in Southern Cultures

Professor Jared Ragland has published a photo essay in Southern Cultures, a peer-reviewed journal by the University of North Carolina’s Center for the Study of the American South. The essay features 15 photographs from an ongoing project, What Has Been Will Be Again, which has led Ragland across more than 25,000 miles and into each of Alabama’s 67 counties to photographically survey his home state’s cultural and physical landscape and document sites of ongoing generational injustice. 

Gothic South (Vol. 29, No. 4)  unpacks the Gothic South, exploring its haints, hollers, and hoodoo and is guest edited by Kinitra D. Brooks, Ph.D, the Audrey and John Leslie Endowed Chair in Literary Studies at Michigan State University. The issue also features a conversation with National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward, photo essay by Kristine Potter, and fiction by noted author Rebecca Bengal.

What Has Been Will Be Again is also the subject of a solo exhibition currently on view at Texas Tech School of Art’s SRO Gallery through Feb. 8. 


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