Chandra McCormick is a New Orleans-born artist who uses photography to provide visual testimony to the lived experiences of African American life, with emphasis on Louisiana—whether chronicling religious ceremonies, cultural traditions, visual histories of the Lower 9th Ward, or tracing the legacies of slavery through sugarcane laborers on plantations, sweet potato field harvesters, or life at Angola, Louisiana State Penitentiary. Her images bear witness to the social realities of Black life—historicizing and archiving the unique traditions and deep-rooted attributes of Louisiana culture.


Since the early 1980s, McCormick has engaged photography as a site of social activism—documenting, illuminating, and conveying the struggles and celebrations of the Black American experience. Her work has been featured nationally and internationally in exhibitions, publications, including la Biennale di Venezia 56th International Art Exhibition in Photography, Venice Italy, Harvard Art Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, Aperture Gallery, Art In America, Smithsonian Magazine, Art Review, London 2021, and Louisiana Medley.