The Archive as Liberation is a publication and exhibition organized by Aaron Turner (Light Work artist–in-residence, 2018, and Light Work exhibiting artist, 2021). Turner has gathered a unique group of artists and writers to engage in dialogue around archival photographic methods. Contributors include Andre Bradley, calista lyon, Raymond Thompson Jr., Harrison D. Walker, and Savannah Wood, alongside writing by Chisato Hughes, Alec Kaus, Andrew Martinez, Aaron Turner, Amelia Wallin, and Wendel A. White, with a foreword by the book’s editor, Donasia Tillery. The publication was designed by Elana Schlenker. 

Tillery writes, “What if memory is not solely an act of recollection, but of discovery and creation? The Archive as Liberation considers this question from the perspectives of subjects who lack access to traditional modes of documentation—Black and Indigenous cultures creatively preserved despite systemic erasure, landscapes that bore witness to colonial conquests, and the lineages that continue to survive in their wake. These works prompt us to consider not just what we remember but how we remember. In doing so, they work to inspire a more authentic vision of the past and a liberated vision of the future.” 

To mark the launch of this publication, Light Work has mounted an exhibition highlighting many of the contributing artists. This exhibition includes work by Andre Bradley, Chisato Hughes, Alec Kaus, calista lyon, Raymond Thompson Jr., Harrison D. Walker, Wendel A. White, and Savannah Wood. 

“The artists included in this publication and exhibition are engaged in resilience, ancestral understanding, counter-memory, translation, activism, tension, narrative, and critique. Through their artistic gestures, they illustrate freedom in the Archive.” —Aaron Turner 

The exhibition also includes a unique reading room curated by Turner with artists’ books from his personal collection and pieces from Light Work’s collection.  The reading room will be in Light Work’s Lab for the duration of the exhibition.

The Archive as Liberation publication is available only at lightwork.shop.

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CURATOR 

Aaron Turner 

Aaron Turner is a photographer, educator, and independent curator, born and raised in the Arkansas Delta. Turner holds an MA from Ohio University and an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts. In his studio practice, he uses the 4×5 view camera to create still-life studies on identity, history, abstraction, and archives. He has organized the following selected exhibitions and symposiums: And Let It Remain So: Women of the African Diaspora (Phoenix Art Museum, 2022), Time & Empathy: Arkansas Photographer Geleve Grice (University of Arkansas, 2021–22), and Resounding Sovereign Expressions: Resurgent Indigenuity in Ozark Arts Practice & Scholarship (University of Arkansas, 2025). He most recently joined the University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design as an assistant professor.

ARTISTS 

Andre Bradley 

Andre Bradley, based in Philadelphia, PA, uses curatorial and photobook practices to explore the subject of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and the Black community. Bradley holds degrees from Image Text Ithaca and Rhode Island School of Design’s MFA program. 

Chisato Hughes 

Chisato (Chisa) Hughes is a filmmaker whose interests circle diasporic identities, queer-of-color feminisms, counternarratives, and lines between belief and truth in history-making. Their work has been shown at UC Santa Cruz, UCLA’s Film and Television Archive, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. 

Alec Kaus 

Alec Kaus, based in Boston, MA, is an artist and educator whose work moves between criticism, curation, and photography, often engaging with notions of home, love, and grief. Kaus holds an MFA with Distinction from the University of Georgia, and a BA in studio art from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 

calista lyon 

calista lyon, based in Fayetteville, AR, uses an expanded photographic practice in which she creates installations, performances, and community-engaged works that explore knowledge and memory as a form of critical resistance in our time of colonial capitalism. Lyon is an assistant professor of photography and expanded media at the University of Arkansas. 

Raymond Thompson Jr.  

Raymond Thompson Jr., based in Austin, TX, is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and visual journalist whose work explores how race, memory, representation, and place combine to shape the Black environmental imagination of the North American landscape. Thompson holds an MFA in photography from West Virginia University, an MA in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin, and a degree in American studies from the University of Mary Washington. He is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. 

Harrison D. Walker 

Harrison D. Walker, based in Westford, MA, is an artist who uses techniques from printmaking, drawing, and photography to create forms that reference celestial phenomena, the otherworldly, and the unknown. Walker holds an MFA in photography from Temple University. He serves as visiting faculty at such institutions as Maine Media Workshops, Wesleyan College, and the University of Alabama, while also being the associate collections photographer at the Northeast Document Conservation Center. 

Wendel A. White 

Wendel A. White, based in New Jersey, has received various awards and fellowships, including an honorary doctorate of arts from Oakland University and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Photography. White is a distinguished professor of art at Stockton University. 

Savannah Wood 

Savannah Wood, with roots in Baltimore and Los Angeles, primarily works within photography, text, and installation to explore how spirituality, domesticity, and our relationships to place shape our identities. Wood holds a degree from the University of Southern California, and currently serves as the executive director of Afro Charities. 

PUBLICATION EDITOR 

Donasia Tillery 

Donasia Tillery is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and cultural worker whose work centers art as a mode of radical honesty, individual healing, and collective liberation. Tillery holds a BA in philosophy from Lehigh University and an MA in African studies from New York University. She is currently the assistant editor of Artforum.com.