I am an art historian with research interests in histories of perception, modernism and modernity, photography, film and video, as well as media theory. In 2024, I received my PhD from Columbia University, I also hold degrees from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Virginia Commonwealth University.
Currently, I am a Visiting Assistant Professor in the College of Art and Design at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
My recent work has focused on early forms of color photography before 1935, including three-color methods and autochromes. Using art historical and media archaeological methodologies, I seek to understand the experience of these photographs in relation to modes of viewing and spectating, often in projection or as reflective and 3-dimensional images. As complex media events, these color images participate in constructing “reality” according to political and ideological motivations of their time.
I have presented my work nationally and internationally including the North American Magic Lantern Conference 2026, the College Art Association 2026, International Panorama Council Conference 2025, at the Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University in the UK, the European Research Council project Chromotope, and at the Internationale Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie (IKKM) in Weimar, Germany. My research has been published in Grey Room, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century as well as PhotoResearcher and my writing on contemporary art has appeared in Millennium Film Journal.
Rachel Lee Hutcheson, PhD 