About
Deanna Ledezma, Ph.D. (she/her) is a Tejanx scholar, writer, and educator specializing in the history and theory of photography and Latinx/e contemporary art and visual culture. Her research investigates formations of Latinx/e and queer identities, Latin American diasporas, transnational labor histories, and genres of life writing, including artists’ books, zines, and photo-essays. She is currently completing her book project Unsettled Archives: Kinships and Diasporas in Latinx Photography.
Creek on the family property, Bandera, Texas from the series Returning as research, 2023–present. Photograph for the Place as Practice Research Collective (Deanna Ledezma, Josh Rios, and Anthony Romero).
Bio
Deanna Ledezma is the Postdoctoral Research Associate and Writing Lab Director of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative (2024–present). She earned her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) and was the Postdoctoral Research Associate of the Inter-University Program for Latino Research/UIC Mellon Fellowship Program from 2022 to 2024.
Her current book project Unsettled Archives: Kinships and Diasporas in Latinx Photography examines how Latinxs use photography to negotiate their cultural and diasporic identities, assert their presence amid the ongoing effects of settler colonialism, and commemorate kinship formations, including those disregarded or censured for exceeding conventional ideas of family. Her forthcoming essay on the photographs of Diana Solís will be published in Feminist Visual Solidarities and Kinships (Rutgers University Press). Previous publications have appeared in Art Journal, Photography & Culture, caa.reviews, Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, and the book Reworking Labor.
In addition to her research- and archive-based scholarship, she is a nonfiction writer and creative practitioner who collaborates with artists on installations, exhibitions, publications, and public-facing events. Ledezma, Josh Rios (School of the Art Institute of Chicago), and Anthony Romero (Dartmouth College) are founding members of the Place as Practice Research Collective. Their exhibition The place where the creek goes underground is on view at Harvard Radcliffe Institute from September 16, 2024 to December 14, 2024.
She has taught graduate- and undergraduate-level courses in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism and the Department of Liberal Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Class topics include: Identities in Modern and Contemporary Art; Photography: History, Theory, Practice; Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art; Latinx Art and Visual Culture; Literature of Latinx Diasporas; and, Latinx Life Writing.
Previous awards include the Santa Fe Art Institute Truth and Reconciliation Thematic Residency, the Inter-University Program for Latino Research/UIC Mellon Fellowship, the Edman-Waltz Fellowship, the Access to Excellence Fellowship, the Diversifying Higher Education Faculty in Illinois Fellowship, and the Chancellor’s Graduate Research Award.
Scholarly Publications
In Progress Book Manuscript
Unsettled Archives: Kinships and Diasporas in Latinx Photography
Forthcoming
“Archival Resurgences and Latina Legacies in the Photographs of Diana Solís.” In Feminist Visual Solidarities and Kinships, edited by Erina Duganne, Susan Richmond, and Genevieve Hyacinthe. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2026. (chapter manuscript in progress)
“Dismantling Latinx Monoliths: Representations of Material Culture, Communities, and Kinship in 1980s Chicago.” In The Routledge Handbook of American Material Culture Studies, edited by Kristin Hass (chapter manuscript accepted)
Published
“Revisiting Pilsen: Akito Tsuda’s Photographs and the Making of a Latinx Archive.” Introductory essay to exhibition catalog for Akito Tsuda: Pilsen Days. Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title, curated by Oscar Arriola and presented at the Chicago Public Library, June 3–December 6, 2024.
“Review of Reclaiming the Americas: Latinx Art and the Politics of Territory by Tatiana Reinoza.” Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture 6, no. 2 (April 2024): 161–162.
Ledezma, Deanna and Josh Rios. “Photographs from the Fields: The Digital Activism of the United Farm Workers.” In Reworking Labor, edited by Ellen Rothenberg and Daniel Eisenberg, 118–139. Chicago: The Institute for Curatorial Research & Practice at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2023.
“Review of Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today.” Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. caa.reviews, May 3, 2023.
Solís, Diana. Luz: Seeing the Space Between Us. Foreword and selected bibliography by Deanna Ledezma. Chicago: Flatlands Press, 2022.
“Selecting Views of Las Trampas: Contact Sheets by Fred E. Mang Jr. and David Jones at the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives.” Photography & Culture 14, no. 1 (March 2021): 1–13.
“Regarding Family Photography in Contemporary Latinx Art.” Art Journal 79, no. 3 (Fall 2020): 80–89.
An opened copy of the chapbook Corona: Shadows of the Loved (2018) with a snapshot of Jackie Luna holding an accordion (1959). Photograph by Deanna Ledezma for “Beyond the Frame: A Conversation on Family Photography with Deanna Ledezma,” an interview by Sandra Riaño for The Latinx Project’s Intervenxions, 2022.
Nonfiction Writing
Kinship Research: An Altar Album, a multimedia artists’ book by Place as Practice Research Collective members Deanna Ledezma, Josh Rios, and Anthony Romero (artwork and manuscript in progress)
The place where the creek goes underground, an artists’ publication with photographs and creative nonfiction essays by Anthony Romero with Deanna Ledezma and Josh Rios, Harvard Radcliffe Institute (forthcoming, November 2024)
We Eat All the Way Down to the Green. Chicago: self published, 2019. A testimonio-based chapbook made with my father for Re:Working Labor, exhibition curated by Ellen Rothenberg and Daniel Eisenberg, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago Sullivan Galleries.
Corona: Shadows of the Loved. Memphis: Walls Divide Press, 2018.
“Arrangements.” In Imperceptibly and Slowly Opening: A Group Exhibition about Plants, edited by Caroline Picard and Devin King, 174–187. Chicago: Green Lantern Press, 2016.
Collaborations: Creative and Curatorial Projects
The place where the creek goes underground, exhibition by Anthony Romero with Deanna Ledezma and Josh Rios, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, September 16–December 14, 2024.
Contigo, Diana Solís, group exhibition co-curated by Nicole Marroquin and Deanna Ledezma, Co-Prosperity, Chicago, August 5–September 23, 2023.
Ballad of the Uprooted, installation by Deanna Ledezma, Josh Rios, and Anthony Romero for Re:Working Labor, exhibition curated by Ellen Rothenberg and Daniel Eisenberg, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago Sullivan Galleries, 2019.
Resounding the Archive at Echo Amphitheater, creative research project and installation by Deanna Ledezma and Josh Rios in Truth & Reconciliation: A Group Exhibition, curated by Toni L. Gentilli, Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico, September 3–October 4, 2019.
Photographs from Deanna Ledezma and Josh Rios, Resounding the Archive at Echo Amphitheater, Carson National Forest, Arriba County, New Mexico, mixed-media installation, 2019. Research on the land grant struggle supported by the Santa Fe Art Institute’s Truth and Reconciliation Thematic Residency, 2019.