Tara Pixley

I am a visual journalist and professor based in Los Angeles with an MFA in Photography, a Ph.D. in Communication, and two decades of experience as a photographer and photo editor. As a queer, first-generation Jamaican-American, I care deeply about the visual rhetorics of immigration/borders, Blackness, LGBTQ+ communities, diaspora, and the Global South. My visual work reframes race, gender, climate futures, LGBTQ+ and immigrant communities through a liberation lens. I am currently documenting the environmental justice issue of Los Angeles urban oil production, supported by the Pulitzer Center/Diversify Photo Eyewitness Photojournalism Grant and featured by Adobe. Previously, I created Source of Safety, an identity-aware safety resource for visual journalists, as a 2022-2023 Reynolds Journalism Institute Fellow.

I have been recognized with awards from the World Press Photo Solutions Visual Journalism Initiative, the National Press Photographer's Association, and as a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University's Nieman Foundation for Journalism. As a Founding Member and Executive Director of Authority Collective, I build community and opportunity for women/nonbinary photographers of color while co-producing interventions into the status quo of visual media. I am also Vice President of the National Press Photographer's Association. My consulting work on inclusive, strategic storytelling combines my two decades of visual media experience with my Ph.D. in Communication to help organizations communicate effectively with diverse audiences.