Andrew Moisey

Overview

I study how pictorial models are related to philosophical systems in photographic media and art history.  My forthcoming book, The Photographic World Picture: A New Prehistory of Photography (Yale, 2026) is about how early modern artists in Europe added immediacy, takenness, and embodiment—features of everyday photography—to their pictures of everyday life before photography. My scholarship is also found in journals like Critical Inquiry, The Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, and Qui Parle. My photobook, The American Fraternity: An Illustrated Ritual Manual (Daylight, 2018), received mainstream and art-world acclaim during the #MeToo era, when it was a best-of-2018 photobook in The Guardian, TIME, and The British Journal of Photography and included in the Barbican’s landmark traveling exhibition Masculinities: Liberation Through Photography (2020-22).  

At Cornell, I teach courses like History of Photography, The Photobook, and Film Art for Art Historians. As our department’s Director of Visual Studies, I sometimes teach Introduction to Visual Studies, a wide-ranging and popular lecture course about the history of modern seeing. When I am not teaching or writing, I am with my family, in my woodshed, or wandering around with a lob wedge.
 

Research Focus

History and theory of photography, moving image media, photographic practice, digital media, modern image culture, affect theory, philosophy of mind, value, and aesthetics