Dr. Rebecca Najdowski

Rebecca Najdowski’s work engages with the material and political implications of representing nature through photographic technologies. For over ten years she has used materials like gelatin silver and chromogenic photographic paper, 35 mm educational slides, overhead projectors, and 3D scanners — often counter to their intended use — to make artworks that prompt viewers to question depictions of nature. By focusing on optics, light, minerals, time, and chemical and digital interactions, her projects embody such essential components of photomedia in order to expose the conditions of representation. Both a celebration and critique of imaging technologies, Rebecca’s work has addressed desert ecology, botanical specimens, natural phenomena like the sun, geothermal activity, and rain, and imaginings of the universe.

Rebecca’s images, objects, and films have been presented internationally, including Aperture Gallery in New York; FORMAT Festival in the United Kingdom; and Athens Digital Art Festival in Greece. She holds a PhD from Victorian College of the Art (University of Melbourne) and an MFA from California College of the Arts in San Francisco and was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to Brazil. From 2013–2015 she was an Artist Fellow at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, where her work is now part of the collection. Rebecca has been an artist-in-residence at Banff Centre in Canada; the Institute for Electronic Art at Alfred University, New York; and at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California.

• PhD, Visual Art, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne (2020)
• MFA, Studio Art, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, USA (2010)
• Bachelor of University Studies, theme: "Cultural Studies and the Arts" **University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA (2004)