MARY BETH MEEHAN is a photographer, writer, and educator who uses images, text, exhibitions, and public installations to bring people together in the search for common ground. Her work asks us to consider those around us, to engage with our own assumptions about ourselves and others, and to imagine new ways of relating across racial, cultural, and social boundaries. Meehan’s portraiture and community collaborations challenge dominant cultural narratives and confront preconceptions, addressing often fraught public dialogue with powerful imagery, personal backstories and tender archival material that lend an essential layer of humanity, insight, and care.

Originally trained as a photojournalist, Meehan has spent over twenty years interrogating her role as a visual storyteller, researching the history of representation and the role of the camera in the enterprise of distorting, misrepresenting and erasing the experiences of people with whom we share the world. She reckons with the limits of photography and yet continually sees the power and potential of visual art to help us uncover our social conditioning and unlock a path to greater understanding.

Meehan’s work has been featured and reviewed in publications internationally, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Le Monde. Meehan has held artist residencies at Brown University, Stanford, the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the University of West Georgia. She has lectured and led workshops at the School of Visual Arts, New York, the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, in Boston, and the Missouri Photo Workshop. A native of Brockton, Massachusetts, Mary Beth received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature at Amherst College, and a Master of Arts degree in photojournalism at the University of Missouri, Columbia. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

CONTACT via email at [email protected]*
*Please note, Meehan will be away from email through Monday, March 4, 2024. Thank you.

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