Abbey Hepner
Abbey Hepner is an artist and educator based outside of St. Louis Missouri. Hepner holds an M.F.A. in Photography from the University of New Mexico. She teaches at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville as an Assistant Professor of Art and Area Head of Photography. Hepner’s artistic practice examines health, technology, and our relationship with place through photography, performance, video, and installation-based work. She frequently works at the intersection of art and science, investigating biopolitics and the use of health as a currency. Hepner is originally from Utah, where her ancestors were downwinders who suffered in the aftermath of the United State’s nuclear testing. Her work on nuclear issues began shortly after the Fukushima disaster in 2011 when she traveled across Germany documenting the decommissioning of nuclear plants. Shortly thereafter, she lived and volunteered in Japan before attending graduate school in New Mexico. Hepner’s work has been exhibited widely in such venues as the Mt. Rokko International Photography Festival (Kobe, Japan), SITE Santa Fe, the Krannert Art Museum, the University of Buffalo Art Galleries, Noorderlicht Photofestival (Groningen, Netherlands), the University of Notre Dame, and the Lianzhou Foto Festival (Lianzhou, China). She has been an artist in residence at the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity in Canada and has presented at numerous Society for Photographic Education conferences. Her monograph, The Light at the End of History, about nuclear issues was published by Daylight Books in 2021.
