Light Work announces the 2027 Light Work Artist-in-Residence Recipients. Twelve under-recognized artists working in lens-based media will receive residencies in 2027:
Genesis Báez (Massachusetts), Nelson Chan (Rhode Island), Heather Cleary (California), Faith Couch (New York), Rebecca Drolen (Arkansas), Daniel Everett (Utah), Oto Gillen (New York), Amak Mahmoodian (United Kingdom), Ryan Peter (Wisconsin), Naguel Rivero (New York), Lawren Simmons (Washington, DC), C. Rose Smith (Tennessee).
Each year, Light Work supports emerging and underrepresented artists working in photography and related media with funding totaling more than $90,000. Each receives a $7,500 honorarium, housing, unrestricted 24-hour access to our digital imaging lab, wet darkroom, lighting studio, a library of photo-related publications, as well as critical and technical support. 2027 will mark 51 years of Light Work’s renowned Artist-in-Residence program.
Light Work continues our collaboration with the Darryl Chappell Foundation, an organization that centers artists and provides additional support to the selected resident. This year the Darryl Chappell Foundation will support artist C. Rose Smith.
Light Work also continues our long collaboration with Autograph, a charity that ensures these stories are seen and celebrated, shaping a more inclusive future in the arts and beyond.
The annual applications are of such high quality that the slimmest of margins determine the judges’ final choices; this year, a record number of applications were submitted. Light Work extends a full-hearted thank you to all who applied.
Genesis Báez (Massachusetts)
Genesis Báez (she/her) is an artist working with photography. Her practice considers how landscapes and the body hold histories of movement and place. Her recent projects and monograph Blue Sun (Capricious, 2025) weave a decade of photographs made in Puerto Rico and its diaspora through a feminist exploration of kinship, memory, and place. Blue Sun was shortlisted for the 2025 Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation First PhotoBook Award and included in the top ten photobooks of 2025 by Smithsonian Magazine. Báez’s work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Detroit Institute of Art, and Yale University Art Gallery, and has been included in recent exhibitions at the Whitney; Dashwood Projects, New York; CONTACT Photography Festival, Toronto; and El Kilometro, San Juan, Puerto Rico. Born in Massachusetts, Báez was raised in New England and Puerto Rico. She holds an MFA from Yale School of Art and is currently an assistant professor of art at Amherst College. She is based between Western Massachusetts and New York City.
Nelson Chan (Rhode Island)
Nelson Chan was born in New Jersey to immigrant parents from Hong Kong and Taiwan and has spent most of his life between the States and Hong Kong. Having grown up between two continents, this immigrant experience influences the majority of his work. Chan received his BFA and MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and the Hartford Art School, respectively. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions such as the Museum of Chinese in America, New York; Boston Center for the Arts; The Print Center, Philadelphia; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; and 798 Space, Beijing. His books are in the institutional libraries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, SFMOMA, Whitney Museum of American Art, Harry Ransom Center, and MoMA, among others. Along with his own artmaking, book publishing and education are extensions of what Chan has referred to as an industrious studio practice. He is cofounder of TIS books, an independent art book publisher, and was production manager at the Aperture Foundation from 2016 to 2019. In 2025, he was awarded tenure at the California College of the Arts, but ultimately left the Bay Area to teach at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he is an associate professor and the graduate program director of the Photography Department.
Heather Cleary (California)
Heather Cleary is a Los Angeles–based photographer whose practice explores perceptual ambiguity and new possibilities for studio-based ways of working. Recent solo exhibitions include A Subtle Body at Sean’s Room East, Los Angeles (2026), and Return at W Projects, Vancouver (2023). Cleary has been included in numerous group exhibitions at venues including Roberts & Tilton, Los Angeles; Denny Gallery, New York; George Lawson Gallery, San Francisco; Vox Populi, Philadelphia; and Tif Sigfrids, Los Angeles. Her work is in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and has been featured in Musée Magazine (curated by Catherine Opie), VIA Publication, and Blow Magazine. She earned her MFA in studio art from UCLA in 2014 and her BFA in photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2003. She is the recipient of a Resnick Scholarship, UCLA Chancellor’s Arts Initiative Grant, and Lilian Levinson Scholarship.
Faith Couch (New York)
Faith Couch is a photographer and visual artist whose practice centers self-depiction as a method of reshaping visual histories that have often excluded or flattened Black life. Couch constructs cinematic photographs that exist between documentation and fabrication; her practice considers how Black subjects inhabit, resist, and reimagine historical and contemporary image regimes. Couch received her BFA in photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art and holds an MFA in photography from Yale University. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at Aperture Foundation, Fotografiska, and Rencontres d’Arles. She has worked editorially with Vogue, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, and was included in Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list in 2021.
Rebecca Drolen (Arkansas)
Rebecca Drolen (b. 1983) is an artist and educator working in Arkansas. Her photographs are concerned with how individuals visually assemble their identity and constructed ideals placed on gendered bodily performance. Her work playfully explores the expansive nature of photography in contemporary art as it incorporates built spaces, assemblage, and performance. Drolen’s work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally, and has appeared in various publications and magazines; her photographs are held in private and institutional collections. She is an associate professor of art at the University of Arkansas School of Art, where she collaborates with colleagues in the Photography Area and serves as the program director of Studio Art. Drolen considers teaching a core priority within her art practice and is respectfully impacted conceptually and creatively by her students.
Daniel Everett (Utah)
Daniel Everett is an artist and professor based in Utah. He received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009. His work has been exhibited throughout Europe, North America, and Asia, including group exhibitions at the Chicago Architecture Biennial; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; Atelier Néerlandais, Paris; East Wing Gallery, Dubai; and Galería Luis Adelantado, Mexico City. He has had solo exhibitions at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; PhMuseum, Bologna; the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City. Publications include two monographs from Actual Source (Marker, 2021, and Vantage Point, 2022) and two from Études (Standard Edition, 2012, and Throughout the Universe in Perpetuity, 2015), and published features in Blind Spot, Closing Ceremony, Epoch Review, Foam Magazine, Granta, Mousse Magazine, and Tools Magazine.
Oto Gillen (New York)
Through self-engineered systems of display, Oto Gillen’s work traces textures of the everyday built environment, ruminating on its architecture, inhabitants, and interaction with the natural world. Gillen graduated from the Cooper Union School of Art in 2007 and, in 2017, was included in the 78th Whitney Biennial. In 2025, he produced a solo exhibition at the Power Station, Dallas. His work is currently on display at the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, through January 2027.
Amak Mahmoodian (United Kingdom)
Amak Mahmoodian is a multidisciplinary artist. She began her career as a research-based photographer in Iran in 2003 at the Art University of Tehran. Since 2010, she has been living in the UK, unable to return to Iran. She practices as a visual artist at the intersection of conceptual image-making and documentary photography, working with photographs, text, video, drawing, archives, and sound. Her practice explores the presentation of gender, identity, and displacement, bridging a space between personal and political across platforms and formats including installation, books, and films. Mahmoodian’s work has been shown internationally, including at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Fototeca Latinoamericana, Buenos Aires; Benaki Museum, Athens; Arnolfini, Bristol; and Rencontres d’Arles. Her works are held in the collections of Tate, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the British Library. She has published two books, Shenasnameh (RRB/ICVL, 2016), and Zanjir (RRB, 2019), which was the 2020 winner of the Best Photo-Text Book award at Rencontres d’Arles. Her work appears in such key photography titles as Photography, A Feminist History (Chronicle Books, 2021), Photography Now: Fifty Pioneers Defining Photography for the Twenty-First Century (Ilex, 2021), and How We See: Photobooks by Women (10×10 Photobooks, 2019).
This residency is proudly in collaboration with Autograph
Since 1988, Autograph has been a vital home for photography that explores race, representation, human rights and social justice – deepening understanding of ourselves and others. Autograph is a charity that ensures these stories are seen and celebrated, shaping a more inclusive future in the arts and beyond.
Ryan Peter (Wisconsin)
Ryan Peter works between painting, drawing, and photography. Recent exhibitions include AAAgent Presents: A lifting shade at Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (2026), and It only works if everyone believes it does at the Green Gallery, Milwaukee (2024). His work has been exhibited at the Vancouver Art Gallery; Polygon Gallery, North Vancouver; Susan Hobbs, Toronto; Platform Centre for Photographic + Digital Arts, Winnipeg; and the Walter & McBean Galleries, San Francisco. He is currently an instructor at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and is based in Wisconsin.
Naguel Rivero (New York)
Naguel Rivero (b. Córdoba, Argentina) is a visual artist trained in film directing and screenwriting at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, currently living and working between Paris and New York City. His work functions as a living archive of contemporary social tensions, exploring the interstices between memory, informal urban structures, and social intervention. Through a multidisciplinary practice intersecting analog photography, video art, and site-responsive installations, his methodology is docu-fictional, oscillating between documentation and narrative artifice. Devotion to the materiality of the image and radical experimentation allows Rivero to transform material constraints into fundamental creative tools, bridging intimate observation with collective staging. His work has been featured in various venues, and he was a finalist at the 38th International Festival of Fashion, Photography and Accessories at Villa Noailles Hyères (2023) and a winner of the Eyes on Talents x Paris Good Fashion – Grand Prix Photography & Sustainability (2023). In 2026, he won the Portfolio Parade Award curated by Erik Kessels at the MIA Photo Fair BNP Paribas, Milan, served as a guest portfolio reviewer at the International Center of Photography, New York, and exhibited his recent project Nada Es Perfecto Aquí (N.E.P.A.) at Foto Tallinn, Estonia, and PhMuseum Days, Bologna, following an artist residency at SARP in Sicily. Rivero has also been awarded an upcoming four-month residency at the Cité internationale des arts, Paris, for 2027.
Lawren Simmons (Washington, DC)
Lawren Simmons is a freelance documentary photographer based in Washington, DC. He hails from Jacksonville, Florida, where he began his photographic practice as a senior in high school. While living in Florida, he completed his first body of work, From a Native Son, which explores the complicated relationship and responsibility one has to their place of birth. Additionally, he photographed a predominantly Black neighborhood in his hometown called OutEast and the effects of gentrification biting at its edges. He is currently working on a project in the nation’s capital about Black grief and the process of working through it. Simmons’s photography focuses on the dynamics of race and identity in an increasingly polarized America. Working primarily within Black communities, he views photography as a platform for self-exploration and hopes his work helps to clarify the collective present moment.
C. Rose Smith (Tennessee)
Rose Smith (b. 1995) is a visual artist who uses photography and moving images to examine the relationship between history, power, and identity. Concerned with how power is distributed across race, class, and gender, Smith composes portraits embodying her concepts of power through fashion, gesture, and pose. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at venues and festivals throughout the US and Europe, including Autograph ABP, London; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; FotoFest Biennial, Houston; Tempe Centre for the Arts; and Hangar, Brussels, among others. Her work is held in private collections. Smith earned an MFA in photography from Rochester Institute of Technology and a BFA from Savannah College of Art and Design. She currently serves as the assistant curator of photography at the Memphis Art Museum.
This residency is proudly supported by The Darryl Chappell Foundation.
The Darryl Chappell Foundation empowers Afrodescendant artists to build sustainable careers through community engagement, mentorship, artist residencies, and market access.
See past Artists-in-Residence at www.lightwork.org/air
Applications are now open for 2028. Apply at lightwork.slideroom.com
