Tara Pixley is a visual journalist and Assistant Professor of Journalism at Temple University. Her research connects journalism studies with visual culture and critical theory to study ethics of care in photojournalism and efforts to re-vision marginalized communities via the new(s) media sphere. She also studies anti-racism in gen-AI/synthetic media, movement journalism and solutions visual journalism.

She is a 2022 Reynolds Journalism Fellow, 2022 Pulitzer Center Grantee, a 2020 awardee of the World Press Photo Solutions Visual Journalism Initiative and a 2016 Visiting Knight Fellow at Harvard University's Nieman Foundation for Journalism. Her photography has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, Newsweek, ProPublica, The Atlantic, Allure, HuffPost, Nieman Reports, and ESPN Magazine, among many other publications. Her filmic and photographic work intersect with her scholarship and advocacy, each using visual media to frame race, gender, climate futures, LGBTQ+ and immigrant communities through a liberation lens. Tara is also a Fulbright Specialist in visual media. 

She serves as Vice President of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) Board and is on the Board of stock photo co-op Stocksy United. She is also co-Founder and Executive Director of Authority Collective — an organization dedicated to establishing equity in visual media. Tara  is currently working on a book chronicling the move to decolonize the visual journalism industry for Columbia University Press and a textbook on critical photojournalism practices for Routledge. 

Tara has a 20-year career in journalism as a photo editor for the New York Times, CNN.com, Newsweek and Creative Loafing.  She has also worked on the photo desks of the Greenville News and Tallahassee Democrat and as a copy editor for the Palm Beach Post.  She holds a PhD in CommunicatIon from UC San Diego, an MFA in Photography from SCAD and a BS in Philosophy and Journalism from FAMU. 

COURSES TAUGHT

• Photojournalism
• Journalism in the Public Interest
• Visual Communication
• Photo Portfolio

PUBLICATIONS

Pixley, T. “Beyond the Hegemonic Gaze: Toward an Ethics of Care in Photojournalism.” Routledge Companion to Visual Journalism. Dahmen, Nicole and Thompson, T.J., editors. Routledge. Forthcoming 2024.

Pixley, T. (2024). “Rethinking ‘hostile’ environments: Trauma literacy and identity-aware safety training for journalists.” Journalism as the Fourth Emergency Service. Bradley, Lisa and Heywood, Emma editors. Peter Lang Publishing. 

Aushana, C., & Pixley, T. (2021). Arresting Optics: Black Femme Witnessing in Protest Photojournalism and the Anti-Black Techniques of Police Vision. History of Photography, 45(3-4), 399-410.

Pixley, T. (2022). “Black Femme Photojournalism.” Special Issue on Photography and Resistance. MAI Feminism & Visual Culture. Web.

Pixley, T., Hadland, A., Campbell, D. & Smith-Rodden, M. (2022). “The State of Photography 2022 Report.” Catchlight.org.

Pixley, T. (2022). “A Summer of Reckoning.” Royal Photographic Society Journal. pp. 392-401

Pixley, T. (2022). “Where LGBTQ+ Migrants Find the True Meaning of Shelter.” New York Times.com  

Pixley, T. (2021). Reframing the homescape: Documenting domesticity during photography’s COVID turn. Visual Studies, 36(2), 106-115.

Pixley, T. (2021). “From Tulsa to Minneapolis: Photographing the Long Road to Justice.” Zeke Magazine. Social Documentary Network. pp. 40-51

Jarvis, J., & Pixley, T. (2021). Immersed in oil: Community journalism, petroculture, and environmental justice in Los Angeles. Communication Teacher, 35(3), 183-190.

Pixley, T. (2020). Revealing the Black Female Aesthetic Through Protest Photojournalism. Visual Communication Quarterly, 27(4), 222-230.

Pixley, T. (2020). “Eyes on Research: Photojournalism under COVID.” News Photographer Magazine. pp. 28-31

Pixley, T. (2020). “Visual Journalism in a Surveilled Society.” Nieman Reports. pp. 34-39.

ed. Pixley, Tara. (2020). Guide to Inclusive Photography. Photoshelter.com.

Pixley, T. (2017).“A New Focus: Why We Need More Visual Journalists and Editors of Color.” Nieman Reports. pp. 22-35.

Pixley, T. (2015). Trope and Associates: Olivia Pope's Scandalous Blackness. The Black Scholar, 45(1), 28-33.