About

Toni Pepe is a Boston-based artist whose creative practice is grounded in photographic processes, memory, storytelling, and identity, as seen through a feminist lens. Found photographs from both private and public collections play a crucial role in her practice. Pepe often uses vernacular or press imagery to explore alternative notions of an archive as well as different modes for collecting and preserving knowledge. Pepe enjoys finding the possibilities and limitations of photography – how it can make us both remember and forget, make something feel entirely present and absent, and show us something beyond the frame. She views the medium of photography as a tool amongst many that she uses in the studio. Occasionally, the camera is the answer to her creative question, but oftentimes, she is using other techniques including mold-making, assemblage, embroidery, performance, and laser etching. As Pepe weaves these varied processes into her practice, her focus is always turned toward how these materials relate to photography in an expanded sense.

Pepe is currently chair and assistant professor of photography at Boston University where she has helped to build and now launch a new MFA in Print Media and Photography. She received her MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology and an MLA in visual culture from Boston University. Pepe has exhibited both nationally and internationally including the Center for Photography at Woodstock and the Wege durch das Land, Music & Literary Festival. She was a finalist for the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship, a Critical Mass top 50, a Review Santa Fe 100, an SPE Imagemaker, and an Artist Trust Grant awardee. Her work is in the permanent collections at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Danforth Art Museum, Candela Books & Gallery, the Magenta Foundation, as well as many private collections.

Contact: tonipepe@bu.edu