WILL WILSON

- WILL WILSON -

Navajo, 1969—

Will Wilson is a contemporary Diné (Navajo Nation) photographer whose work reshapes how Indigenous peoples are seen and represented through photographic practice. Raised on the Navajo Nation, Wilson pursued a multidisciplinary arts education, earning a BA in Studio Art and Art History from Oberlin College (1993) and an MFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico (2002). Growing out of both his lived experience in Indigenous communities and critical engagement with art history, Wilson’s work centers Indigenous agency, cultural survivance, and self-representation. He has taught photography at several institutions—including the Institute of American Indian Arts, Oberlin College, and the University of Arizona—and led the photography program at Santa Fe Community College for nearly a decade. Wilson’s practice has garnered numerous awards, such as the Eiteljorg Museum Native American Fine Art Fellowship (2007), a Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2010), a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant (2016), and a Doran Artist-in-Residence at Yale University Art Gallery (2020), as well as the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts (2017).

At the heart of Wilson’s artistic legacy is his Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange (CIPX), an ongoing photographic project he initiated in 2012 that challenges historic, colonial modes of representation by inviting participants—often Indigenous artists, leaders, and community members—to collaborate on portraits using historic wet-plate collodion and tintype processes. Rather than staging subjects through an outsider’s lens, Wilson’s approach foregrounds their choices in pose, attire, personal objects, and context, producing images that affirm self-determination and identity. His work often integrates this historic photographic technique with contemporary digital media, including “Talking Tintypes,” an augmented reality extension that animates the portraits and deepens viewer engagement.

Wilson’s photographs and projects have been shown widely in the U.S. and internationally, and are held in the collections and temporary exhibitions of major museums. His CIPX-related works have been exhibited at the Denver Art Museum, the National Museum of the American Indian, the New Mexico Museum of Art, and collegiate institutions such as Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. Wilson’s work has been featured in touring exhibitions like “In Conversation: Will Wilson,” organized by the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and presented at venues including the Mennello Museum of American Art and the Dubuque Museum of Art (2025–26), where his tintype portraits are shown alongside and against the legacy of Edward S. Curtis to reframe the visual narrative of Native America.