Abbey Hepner
United States
Biography
Abbey Hepner is an artist and educator based near St. Louis, Missouri. Hepner’s work explores health, technology, and place through a combination of nineteenth-century analog photography and twenty-first-century technology. Hepner is originally from Utah, where her ancestors were downwinders who suffered in the aftermath of the United State’s nuclear testing. Her work has been widely exhibited in venues such as the Mt. Rokko International Photography Festival and SITE Santa Fe. Hepner’s monograph, The Light at the End of History, was published in 2021 and focuses on nuclear issues.
Last Project
The Light at the End of History presents photographs from artist Abbey Hepner's decade-long examination of nuclear energy, the atomic bomb, and radioactive waste. By capturing distinct marks in time, Hepner makes visible the ongoing, often invisible, relationships with nuclear technologies. The book features images from 8 series of works that include X-Ray film photographs, cyanotype on bone, laser engraved photographs, and uranium prints.
Statement
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. Her 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). Her work has been recently highlighted in Hyperallergic, Lenscratch, Ars Technica, Artillery Magazine, and Fraction Magazine. She has been an artist in residence at the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity in Canada, has presented at numerous Society for Photographic Education conferences, and was a 2020 Yuma Art Symposium presenter. Her monograph, The Light at the End of History, about nuclear issues was published by Daylight Books in 2021.
