BIO

Dr. Anton Lee specializes in the history and theory of photography, focusing on the geopolitical contexts of European and Anglo-American countries from the early 20th century to the present. This primary scope of research has been expanded to other periods and regions in the global histories of photography, including East Asia, the Caribbean, West Africa, and the Pacific Northwest. His research interests include: photographic multiples in sequential or serial forms; the epistemology of the photobook; photography’s relationship with text and narrative; critical discourse on photography circa 1970s; critical theory and poststructuralism in the global setting. Through his research and teaching, Anton reevaluates the often maligned aspects of photography, pertaining to confusion, illegibility, and fiction. This is an effort to rethink photography as a vehicle for imaginative and transgressive experiences, in anticipation of a more fluid understanding of selfhood and otherness.

Before joining NSCAD, Anton taught and advised undergraduate and graduate students at the University of British Columbia, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, McGill University, and the University of Houston. Previous course topics encompass: photography history and theory; contemporary photography and lens-based art; postmodern and contemporary art; introductions to global art history; 19th-century visual culture; Korean modern and contemporary art; and art historical methods. His classes aspire truly global, inclusive, and decolonial approaches to subject matter, and this commitment is reflected on course design, from lecture content to assignments. Lee’s most recent classes on contemporary photo theory explored such urgent issues as ecology, petrocapitalism, race and ethnicity, trans and non-binary, the posthuman, indigeneity, migration, and diaspora. His pedagogy greatly values a dynamic pursuit of criticality through in-class debates and research-creation method.

Lee is currently working on his first book, preliminarily titled New Wave of American Photography: The Rise of Photographic Sequence in the United State and France, 1968–1989. His writings have appeared or are forthcoming in various academic journals and art magazines, including Critical Inquiry, History of Photography, Canadian Art, and Afterimage. Selected publications include: “‘A dream, dictating its own course’: On Ralph Gibson’s Photobook Trilogy, 1970–1974,” Compendium: Journal of Comparative Studies, no 2 (2022); “Scenes of Coexistence,” in Bouquet by Lorraine Gilbert (Montréal: VU, 2021); “Photography, Multiplicity, Promiscuity: Michel Foucault and Walter Benjamin,” Materiali Foucaultiani 9, nos. 17/18 (2020); “The Photogenic Invention of Thought-Emotion: Duane Michals and Michel Foucault,” in Foucault on the Arts and Letters: Perspectives for the Twenty-First Century edited by Catherine Soussloff (London, UK: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2016). Lee was the Kenneth J. Botto Research Fellow at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona in 2016 and the Visiting Researcher at the Université Paris-Sorbonne in 2015.