Lesly Deschler Canossi is an artist, photography educator, and cultural producer who holds an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she focused on the museological object's role in constructing culture. Her research aims to reframe photography's history to better reflect a story of innovation that includes women, while her educational work centers on fostering deep creativity and representational justice.

In 2016, she co-founded Women Picturing Revolution (WPR), an organization dedicated to women-identifying photographers who document conflicts and crises in both private and public spaces. WPR presented on the photographic representation of Black motherhood at the Tate Modern in 2019 and published Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation: Another Way of Knowing (Leuven University Press) in 2022.

Her personal and teaching practice explores themes of care, mothering, and grief. Her groundbreaking course Into the Fold: Mother Artist Identity, which examines artist-parent identity through lens and performance-based works, was the first of its kind offered at a major photographic institution.

Currently a faculty member at the International Center of Photography, Lesly leads critique groups at CPW and La Luz while working as an independent cultural producer, delivering seminars, lectures, and curated panels for educational institutions, nonprofits, and corporate clients. For over 14 years, she operated Fiber Ink Studio, providing printing services for emerging and established artists and institutions worldwide including MoMa, Jeu de Paume, Paris, SFMOMA, Gagosian Gallery, and The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Her technical expertise spans silver gelatin, analog Type-C, and wide-format pigment printing. These days, she prints exclusively for the Estate of Nona Faustine and a small handful of other artists / institutions. Lesly lives in Beacon, New York with her family on a mini homestead that includes honeybees.

SELECTED LECTURES, PANELS AND SEMINARS

Paper presented, Interconnected Bodies: Women, Water & Photographic Urgency, Fast Forward 5th conference "Hidden (Hi)stories: New Perspectives of Women’s Photographies" at MOMus-Museum of Contemporary Art- Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art and State Museum of Contemporary Art Collections, Thessaloniki, Greece 17-19 May 2024

CPW, Meet the Artist, Lesly Deschler Canossi, Zoraida Lopez-Diago, and Qiana Mestrich, April 13, 2023

Moderator: When Langauge is Not Enough, Karen Marshall Between Girls, Focus on the Story Photography Festival, June 19, 2021

Moderator: International Center of Photography, Book launch + talk with photographer Karen Marshall on her work Between Girls published by Kehrer Verlag, October 21, 2021

Moderator: Live Online Photo Talk, StrudelmediaLive, Samantha Box with Lesly Deschler Canossi  —  September 18, 2020

Moderator: Urgent Pictures! Photographs of Unrest Reconsidered in Isolation & Future Imagination, Focus on the Story Photography Festival, July 7, 2020

Paper presented, Representations of Black Motherhood in Contemporary Photography, Fast Forward Women in Photography: How Do Women Work?, Tate Modern; London, England — December 1, 2019

Panel Guest, Missing Mother conference (University of Bolton, UK), Woman Up! Stopping the F*cking Wheel focused on the development and continued need for women-led platforms and organizations supporting artists who are also mothers and carers over the past 10 years.

Moderator: From Darkness to Daylight, Film Screening, Director Harvey Wang, Story Screen, Beacon, New York — November 14, 2019

Seminar with Magnum Photographer Diana Markosian & Yukiko Yamagata, curator and deputy director of Culture and Art at the Open Society Foundation, International Center of Photography; New York, NY  —  October 27, 2019

Women Picturing Revolution & International Women's Week, B&H Photo & Video; New York, NY  —  May 24, 2019

Women Picturing Revolution: The Photographic and Electronic Media Now, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Graduate School of Photography; Baltimore, MD — October 2018

Women Picturing Revolution in conversation artist and activist Lola Flash, Baxter St. at CCNY, New York, NY,   —  May 24, 2018

Women Picturing Revolution in conversation with Catherine Morris, Curator, and co-organizer of We Wanted a Revolution, Brooklyn Museum, Lightfield Photography Festival; Hudson, NY  — September 9th, 2017

Women Picturing Revolution: Focus on Africa and African Diaspora, with guest artists Ayana V. Jackson and Nona Faustine, Columbia University, Institute for African American Studies (IRAAS); New York, NY — March 11, 2017

The Most Important Picture: Syria with panel guest, Packard Collegiate Institute, Brooklyn, NY — May 5, 2017

Women Picturing Revolution panel with Photographers Donna De Cesare, Tanya Habjouqa, and Muriel Hasbun, moderated by Grace Aneiza Ali, International Center of Photography; New York, NY  —  November 16, 2016

Seminar with Photographer Sheila Pree Bright &  Filmmaker Laura Doggett & filmmaker Khaldiya Jibawi, Women Picturing Revolution International Center of Photography;  New York, NY  —  November 5, 2016

SELECTED INTERVIEWS

International Center of Photography Faculty member Lesly Deschler Canossi discusses upcoming class Domestic Space in the Era of Social Distancing.

WOMAN UP! Podcast Series 2, episode 8 – Women Picturing Revolution

Humble Arts Foundation co-founder Jon Feinstein interviews Women Picturing Revolution

International Center of Photography interview with Women Picturing Revolution - page 15

Black Perspectives interview with Women Picturing Revolution by Jonathan Collier

EDUCATION

Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Baltimore, MD — MFA Photography & Electronic Media, 2007

Herron School of Art + Design, Indiana / Purdue University, Indianapolis, IN — BFA in Photography, 1995