Melissa Harris

Biography

Melissa Harris is editor-at-large of Aperture Foundation, where she worked for more than twenty years, including as editor-in-chief of Aperture magazine from 2002 to 2012; under her leadership, the magazine received many honors, including ASME’s National Magazine Award for General Excellence. Harris has also edited more than forty books for Aperture, including Letizia Battaglia, Passion, Justice, Freedom; Donna Ferrato, Living with the Enemy; Luigi Ghirri, It’s Beautiful Here, Isn’t It…; Graciela Iturbide, Images of the Spirit; Sally Mann, Immediate Family; Mary Ellen Mark, Tiny: Streetwise Revisited; Richard Misrach and Kate Orff, Petrochemical America; Eugene Richards, Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue; David Vaughan, Merce Cunningham: Fifty Years; and David Wojnarowicz, Brush Fires in the Social Landscape. Harris has curated photography exhibitions for Aperture, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; C/O Berlin (with Sophia Greiff and Kathrin Schönegg); the Triennale di Milano (with Germano Celant); Fondazione Prada, Milan; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; Villa Pignatelli, Naples; and Visa pour l’Image, Perpignan, among other venues. She continues to curate exhibitions worldwide. Harris teaches at New York University in the Tisch School of the Arts, Department of Photography & Imaging / Emerging Media. She served on New York City’s Community Board 5 for several years, and is a trustee of the John Cage Trust. A Wild Life, her visual biography of photographer Michael Nichols, was published by Aperture in 2017. 

Next, her visual biography of Josef Koudelka, was published by Aperture and Magnum Foundation in November 2023.