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Kate Joyce (—photographer)

Kate Joyce is a photographer from Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is the author of four books: Metamorphoses (2021) and Analogies (2023), published by the artist’s imprint Special Problems Press; and Metaphysics (2022) and Big Ears Knoxville (2019), published by Hat & Beard Press. Her work explores the ambiguities of things in the process of change. Indebted to the belief that constrained systems contain possibility, Joyce defamiliarizes everyday objects and experiences to reveal philosophical dimensions hidden within ordinary life. Joyce engages with language and images as interdependent tools for creating meaning and expanding the limits of what a photograph can do, whether collaborating on new translations of ancient texts, maintaining an image-based conversation exploring friendship and cognition, or using a modernist novel to see iconic architecture anew. Joyce’s work is represented in the permanent collections of the North Carolina Museum of Art, Museum of New Mexico Palace of the Governors, JP Morgan Chase Art Collection, Duke University Perkins Library Special Collections & Rare Book Archive, Cassilhaus Collection, the Center for Creative Photography, and the Art Institute of Chicago’s Ryerson and Burnham Libraries. She is a resident artist at the Santa Fe Institute in northern New Mexico and a 2024/25 artist-in-residence at the Fallingwater Institute in western Pennsylvania. Joyce studied photojournalism and sociology at San Francisco State University and documentary photography at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.

Recipient of a Lewis Hine Documentary Initiative Fellowship (2003-2004) during which she lived in Bloemfontein, South Africa working with Diketso Eseng Dipuo Community Development Trust, a local NGO in the field of early childhood development and education in rural and informal settlements.

For over a decade Kate has collaborated on documentary art projects, exhibitions and publications with writer Sam Stephenson and Rock Fish Stew Institute of Literature and Materials with subjects ranging from minor league baseball in Durham, NC (Bull City Summer) to a radical international music festival in Knoxville, TN (Big Ears Knoxville).

In 2018 Kate’s photographs were exhibited at the Santa Fe Institute as part of their Complexity of Time Symposium. These works subsequently evolved into Metaphysics, with a solo installation at SITE Santa Fe in 2022 and companion monograph printed by Hat & Beard Press, LA.

In 2021 Kate created her imprint Special Problems Press to explore self-publishing and enable the distribution of projects with particularly long page counts.

Metamorphoses (Special Problems Press, 2021) transforms Ovid’s collection of myths from the ancient world, written toward the end of his life nearly two thousand years ago, into a photographic journal of contemporary life seen through a series of photographs made 20-years ago in Chile. With a new and collaborative English translation from the Latin by longtime friend and historian Andrew Berns.

Analogies (Special Problems Press, revised edition 2023) is a dialogue in picture sequences between Kate Joyce and software engineer Gordon Cameron that asks how human minds make connections and challenges the idea that artificial intelligence could do the same.

From 2007-2010 Kate worked for the renowned architectural photography studio Hedrich Blessing as an apprentice and their first female photographer to work with clients on location. Hedrich Blessing’s founders worked with the likes of Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright. In 2010, in the aftermath of the 2007-2009 financial crisis, she established Kate Joyce Studios to manage her freelance architectural and editorial photography commissions.

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2022 Kate Joyce: Metaphysics, SITE Santa Fe, NM
2018 We Are Time Is, Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM
2014 Bull City Summer, Rick Wester Fine Art, New York, NY
2006 Aporia, Victoria Price Contemporary Art & Design, Santa Fe, NM
2005 Grassland Phase II: Residents and Government Reshaping South Africa’s Informal Settlements, Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University, Durham, NC

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2026 the scent of buckwheat, 5. Gallery, Santa Fe, NM    
2025 Luminous Matter, Secrist|Beach, Chicago, IL      
2024 Spiraling Upwards, The Leonardo, Salt Lake City, UT
2019 Qualities of Light, Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ
2017 Nature Morte: Contemporary Artists Reinvigorate the Still Life Tradition, Guildhall Art Gallery, London
2015 Big, Bent Ears: A Multimedia Installation About Listening, Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh, NC
2014 Bull City Summer, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC
Bull City Summer, Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh, NC

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

2026 Alexander Girard’s Imagined Worlds, Obniski, Monica, and Addison, Laura, eds., Joyce, Kate, photographs, Munich: Hirmer

2023 Analogies (revised edition), Joyce, Kate, and Cameron, Gordon, Santa Fe: Special Problems Press 

2022 Metaphysics, Joyce, Kate, photographs, Weschler, Lawrence, afterword, Los Angeles: Hat & Beard Press

2021 Metamorphoses, Joyce, Kate, photographs, Berns, Andrew, translation, Santa Fe: Special Problems Press 

2019 Big Ears Knoxville, Joyce, Kate, photographs, Ratliff, Ben, introduction, Henry, Joe, and Grimes, Rachel, essays, Los Angeles: Hat & Beard Press 

2017 "PLANE", selected photographs, Harper's Magazine, June

2016 “Concessions and the Cup Holder, 2011” (detail), Harper’s Magazine, July

2014 Bull City Summer: A season at the ballpark, Stephenson, Sam, editor, Chapel Hill: Daylight Books
“Impact of a Ball and the Outfield Wall, Part I” (detail), Harper’s Magazine, August

2013 Nature Morte: Contemporary Artists Reinvigorate the Still Life Tradition, Petry, Michael, ed., London: Thames & Hudson

2011 Munro, Alice, “Axis”, The New Yorker, Jan. 31, 2011: 65

2010 Freudenberger, Nell, “An Arranged Marriage”, The New Yorker, Sept. 6, 2010: 68
Eugenides, Jeffrey, “Extreme Solitude”, The New Yorker, June 7, 2010: 60

2009 Beyond Beauty: The Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University, Durham: Duke University Libraries

2008 Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe, Redding, Mary Anne, and Elrick, Krista, eds. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press
“Threshold of Human Touch”, Lopez, Barry and Stewart, Frank, eds., Gates of Reconciliation: Literature and the Ethical Imagination, Manoa Journal, University of Hawai’i, 20:1: 108-112

2000 Hollow City: The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism, Solnit, Rebecca, author, Schwartzenberg, Susan and Joyce, Kate, photographs, London: Verso

COLLECTIONS

Aardt Foundation, Birmingham, AL
Art Institute of Chicago’s Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, Chicago, IL
Cassilhaus Collection, NC
Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ
Duke University Perkins Library Special Collections & Rare Book Archive, Durham, NC
JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, New York, NY
Museum of New Mexico Palace of the Governors, Santa Fe, NM
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC

PUBLIC SCREENINGS AND GUEST LECTURES

2025 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI), St. Andrews, Scotland
2024 Santa Fe Institute, “Synthetic Imagination”, Santa Fe, NM
2022 University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC
SITE Santa Fe, “Metamorphoses”, Santa Fe, NM
2020 Musil Museum of Literature, Klagenfurt, Austria
2018 Santa Fe Institute, “Complexity of Time”, Santa Fe, NM
2017 MIT, Urban Design Studio, Cambridge, MA
2013 School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
2012 Columbia College, Chicago, IL
2011  Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS
2010  Pecha Kucha Chicago, Volume 14, Chicago, IL
2005  Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE, FELLOWSHIPS, AND GRANTS

Resident artist at the Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM
2026  Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Arts Grant
2024  Fallingwater Institute, Bear Run Nature Reserve, Western PA
2013  Illinois Arts Council Professional Development Grant
2011  Community Arts Assistance Program (CAAP) Grantee, Department of Cultural Affairs, Chicago 
2010  Community Arts Assistance Program (CAAP) Grantee, Department of Cultural Affairs, Chicago 
2004  Lewis Hine Documentary Initiative Fellowship, Bloemfontein, South Africa

ADDITIONAL WORK EXPERIENCE

2010-present  Kate Joyce Studios

2014-16 Santa Fe University of Art and Design, instructor, Mexico and Peru campuses

2007-10 Hedrich Blessing Photographers, apprenticeship and staff photographer, Chicago, IL

2006 O’Keeffe Art and Leadership Program for Girls, photography art teacher, Santa Fe, NM

2005-06 Lewis Hine Documentary Initiative, program coordinator, Durham, NC

EDUCATION

2003-05 Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University, Durham, NC
1999-03 San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA
1998       Instituto Central America Spanish School, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala

SOLO-ARTIST BOOK Metaphysics (Hat & Beard Press Fall 2022) Metamorphoses (Special Problems Press 2021) Big Ears Knoxville (Hat and Beard Press 2019) MULTIPLE-ARTIST BOOK PUBLICATIONS include Analogies (Special Problems Press 2021) Nature Morte: Contemporary Artists Reinvigorate the Still Life Tradition (Thames & Hudson), Bull City Summer (Daylight Books), Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe (Museum of New Mexico Press), and Hollow City:The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism (Verso). WORKS PUBLISHED BY Harper’s Magazine, BLAU International, The New Yorker, The Paris Review Daily, The Chicagoan, Architect Magazine, Manoa Journal and The New York Times. IN THE COLLECTIONS OF Museum of New Mexico Palace of the Governors, NM; North Carolina Museum of Art, NC; Duke University Perkins Library Special Collections & Rare Book Archive, NC; The Cassilhaus Collection, NC; and the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, NY. SOLO EXHIBITIONS include SITE Santa Fe; Santa Fe Institute; Rick Wester Fine Art, New York; RTKL Chicago Gallery, Chicago; Experimental Sound Studio/Audible Gallery, Chicago; Duke University, Durham, NC. GROUP EXHIBITIONS include Center for Creative Photography, Tucson; Obscura Gallery, Santa Fe; Guildhall Art Gallery, London; North Carolina Museum of Art, NC; Contemporary Art Museum Raleigh, NC; The Ukrainian Museum of Modern Art, Chicago; Nasher Museum of Art, NC; and Museum of New Mexico Palace of the Governors, NM.