Qiana Mestrich (she/her) is a photography-focused interdisciplinary artist, photo historian, writer and SEO professional who lives and works between Brooklyn and New York’s Hudson Valley. Born and raised in New York City to immigrant parents from Panama and Croatia, Mestrich's autobiographical artwork and research engages issues around Black, mixed-race identity, motherhood/mothering, women’s corporate labor and self-determination through fashion.
Mestrich has exhibited worldwide including the international Triennial RAY Fotografieprojekte Frankfurt/RheinMain and London Art Fair’s Photo50. Knowledge sharing and community building is a vital part of Mestrich’s practice. In 2007 she founded Dodge & Burn: Decolonizing Photography History, a blog diversifying the medium’s history by advocating for photographers of color.
Dodge & Burn began as a blog and from 2013 - 2022 also functioned as a monthly critique group that met in person in New York City and virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her forthcoming book based on a selection of the blog’s interviews will release on March 7, 2025, published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis. (Preorder the book here).
Mestrich has written essays on photography for exhibition catalogs and published other critical writing in art journals such as Light Work’s Contact Sheet, En Foco’s Nueva Luz and SPE’s exposure. She is also co-editor of the book How We Do Both: Art and Motherhood (Secretary Press), a diverse collection of honest responses from contemporary artists who dare to engage in the creative endeavors of motherhood and making art.
A graduate of the ICP-Bard College MFA in Advanced Photographic Practice, Mestrich received her B.A. with a concentration in photography from Sarah Lawrence College. She is an adjunct faculty in photography and social media at the Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY) and is represented in New York by sepiaEYE gallery. In 2022, Mestrich was awarded the Magnum Foundation Counter Histories grant for her @WorkingWOC Instagram archive project on women of color in the corporate workplace.
View my Curriculum Vitae, read my writings on Academia.edu or see my SEO experience on LinkedIn.
Member of the Femxphotographers collective.
Mestrich has exhibited worldwide including the international Triennial RAY Fotografieprojekte Frankfurt/RheinMain and London Art Fair’s Photo50. Knowledge sharing and community building is a vital part of Mestrich’s practice. In 2007 she founded Dodge & Burn: Decolonizing Photography History, a blog diversifying the medium’s history by advocating for photographers of color.
Dodge & Burn began as a blog and from 2013 - 2022 also functioned as a monthly critique group that met in person in New York City and virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her forthcoming book based on a selection of the blog’s interviews will release on March 7, 2025, published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis. (Preorder the book here).
Mestrich has written essays on photography for exhibition catalogs and published other critical writing in art journals such as Light Work’s Contact Sheet, En Foco’s Nueva Luz and SPE’s exposure. She is also co-editor of the book How We Do Both: Art and Motherhood (Secretary Press), a diverse collection of honest responses from contemporary artists who dare to engage in the creative endeavors of motherhood and making art.
A graduate of the ICP-Bard College MFA in Advanced Photographic Practice, Mestrich received her B.A. with a concentration in photography from Sarah Lawrence College. She is an adjunct faculty in photography and social media at the Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY) and is represented in New York by sepiaEYE gallery. In 2022, Mestrich was awarded the Magnum Foundation Counter Histories grant for her @WorkingWOC Instagram archive project on women of color in the corporate workplace.
View my Curriculum Vitae, read my writings on Academia.edu or see my SEO experience on LinkedIn.
Member of the Femxphotographers collective.