Jess T. Dugan

Jess T. Dugan (American, b. 1986 Biloxi, MS) is an artist whose work explores issues of identity through photography, video, and writing. They received their MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago, their Master of Liberal Arts in Museum Studies from Harvard University, and their BFA in Photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Dugan’s work has been widely exhibited and is in the permanent collections of over 50 museums, including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the International Center of Photography, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the St. Louis Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and the Library of Congress.

Dugan’s monographs include Look at me like you love me (MACK, 2022), To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults (Kehrer Verlag, 2018) and Every Breath We Drew (Daylight Books, 2015).

They are the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, an ICP Infinity Award, and were selected by the Obama White House as an LGBT Artist Champion of Change.
Dugan’s commercial and editorial clients include the ACLU Magazine, Airbnb, The Guardian, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, and TIME.

Dugan teaches workshops at venues including the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, CO, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, and Filter Photo in Chicago, IL. In 2015, they co-founded the Strange Fire Collective to highlight work made by women, people of color, and LGBTQ artists. For the 2020-2021 academic year, Dugan was the Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Teaching Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis.