ABOUT

Alison Cornyn is a multidisciplinary artist at the convergence of traditional media and technology with a long career steeped in exhibitions, interactive and web design as well as in aggregating communities of shared interest and fostering civic dialogue. She is founding partner and Creative Director of Picture Projects, a Brooklyn-based studio that produces in-depth transmedia projects about some of the most pressing social issues of our day with a focus on investigating complex stories from multiple perspectives. Merging art, photography, media and a deep knowledge of technology, Alison and her studio Picture Projects, create engaging environments, both as physical installations and online narratives. Also, as an activist artist in 2014 Cornyn founded Incorrigibles which investigates the history of girls’ incarceration in the US. In 2011 she founded the Prison Public Memory Project. She is Creative Director of States of Incarceration and the Guantanamo Public Memory Project.

Her work has received numerous awards including a Webby Award for net.art, the Peabody Award, the Gracie Allen award for Women in Media, the Online News Association’s award for Best Use of Multimedia, the Batten Award for Innovation, as well as the National Press Club Award. Her work has been supported by grants from the NEA, NEH, Creative Capital, New York State Council of the Arts, and the New York Foundation of the Arts among others.

Alison is on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts' Design for Social Innovation MA Program (DSI) and has taught in the art department at City College, at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), and Parsons The New School. She has conducted workshops on multimedia storytelling and guest lectured at the Sundance Film Festival, Montreal Film Festival, IDFA in Amsterdam. She has a B.A. from Connecticut College, an M.F.A. from Hunter College, a Masters in Interactive Telecommunications from New York University, and was an artist in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. She was a 2017 TED Resident and gave a TED Talk about the history of young women’s incarceration. Alison lives with her husband, Gilles Peress and their two daughters in Brooklyn, NY

alison.cornyn@gmail.com