Dionne Lee

Lee's formal interventions and innovative darkroom techniques ' including rephotographing found imagery from wilderness survival manuals and using graphite pencils to create inscriptions on her photographs of the landscape ' weave together new narratives that address themes of dispossession, loss, survival, and resilience. Dionne Lee: Currents, the artist's first monograph, brings together key works from over a decade of Lee's career alongside essays by award-winning poet Camille T. Dungy and curator Eric Booker, as well as an interview with the artist Gabrielle L'Hirondelle Hill, offering a deeper look at a visionary artist reshaping how we see­ ' and choose to imagine ' the great outdoors.

Contact Sheet 205 highlights the multimedia work of Oakland-based artist Dionne Lee. The publication centers on her exploration of the American landscape, tracking how natural environments intersect with themes of survival, power, and historical trauma.

The work examines the dual nature of the outdoors, presenting it simultaneously as a space of personal refuge and a site shaped by racial violence, vulnerability, and climate anxiety. By incorporating elements from wilderness survival manuals alongside photographic fragments, Lee investigates ancestral knowledge, resourcefulness, and the human drive to endure in an unstable world.

Her darkroom interventions deliberately disrupt traditional photographic processes through physical manipulation, including graphite drawings on prints, double exposures, and scanner-bed experiments. These techniques challenge traditional notions of authorship, pristine documentation, and colonialist views of the earth, reframing photography as an active, fluid medium.

This catalog includes an essay by Light Work’s associate director Mary Lee Hodgens.