Lisa McCord is a fine art and documentary photographer from the Arkansas Delta, who lives and works in Los Angeles and Arkansas. Focusing on her experiences on her family’s cotton farm, her creative practice explores concepts of storytelling, memory, and the passage of time.
McCord received her BFA from San Francisco Art Institute and earned an MFA from California Institute of the Arts. She also attended New York University, Le Contrejour, Paris, and The Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY. She taught photography at Pepperdine University.
She has exhibited her work in galleries and museums, including Annenberg Space for Photography, Building Bridges Art Exchange, Bruce Lurie Gallery, and Leica Gallery LA. McCord’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Fabrik Projects, Gallery 825, Leica Gallery, Memphis Cotton Museum and Slow Exposures. Internationally, she has exhibited at the Museum of Nature of Cantabria in Spain, MIA Photo Fair in Milan, and Alta Vista in Paris. McCord’s work is in the permanent collections of the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts and the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.
Her first monograph, Rotan Switch, was published in 2024, by Kehrer Verlag, and is a finalist in the Lucie Foundation Photo Book Awards. Book signings include Coston Arts Center, in Osceola, Arkansas, Photo London, and Alta Vista Arts in Paris.
Her work has been featured in numerous publications including AAP Magazine, Arkansas Democratic Gazette, Black & White Photography (UK edition), Float Magazine, and The Guardian. She was a Critical Mass Top 200 Finalist in 2015, 2016, 2021 and Top 50 in 2024.