Artist Talk and Book Signing: Lisa McCord

Please join us in-person for an artist talk and book signing with Lisa McCord for her exhibition Rotan Switch, on view in our Griffin Library Gallery July 31 - September 6, 2026.

In Rotan Switch, Lisa McCord documents life on her grandparents' cotton farm in the Arkansas Delta community of Rotan. It takes its name from the community's central landmark - the railroad switch where farmers loaded their cotton bales onto trains headed out of the Delta. Although it has not been used in years, it remains a potent symbol of the complex intersections of industry and agriculture, of racism and injustice. This project spans forty-five years, from 1978 to 2021, following five generations of a community.

© Lisa McCord© Lisa McCord

About the artist:

Lisa McCord is a fine art and documentary photographer from the Arkansas Delta, who lives and works in Los Angeles and Arkansas. Focusing on her experiences on her family's cotton farm, her creative practice explores concepts of storytelling, memory, and the passage of time.

McCord received her BFA from San Francisco Art Institute and earned an MFA from California Institute of the Arts. She also attended New York University, Le Contrejour, Paris, and The Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY. She taught photography at Pepperdine University.

Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Leica Gallery LA, Slow Exposures, Bruce Lurie Gallery, Gallery 825, Fabrik Projects, and Memphis Cotton Museum. McCord's work has also been exhibited in galleries and museums, including Annenberg Space for Photography, Building Bridges Art Exchange, Museum of Nature of Cantabria in Spain, MIA Photo Fair in Milan, and Alta Vista in Paris. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts and the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

Her first monograph, Rotan Switch, was published in 2024, by Kehrer Verlag, and was a finalist in the Lucie Foundation Photo Book Awards. Book signings include Paris Photo, Photo London, and Coston Arts Center, in Arkansas.

Her work has been featured in numerous publications including The Guardian, Arkansas Democratic Gazette, AAP Magazine, Black & White Photography (UK edition), and Float Magazine. In 2025, she was a Critical Mass Top 50 with her series, Rotan Switch.