Stephanie Dowda DeMerEmory Arts Fellow in Visual Arts
Stephanie Dowda DeMer, MFA’18 VCU, is an American photographer and experimental media artist. Her work excavates invisibility and creates space for reflection through phenomena, communion, and kinship. Dowda DeMer uses the materiality of photography to address grief, climate catastrophe, and power. Dowda DeMer was named the inaugural Iowa Idea Fellow in Photography at the University of Iowa. She has taught photography at Arizona State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and most recently, Wesleyan College. DeMer holds an MFA in Photo + Video from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is an Atlanta Contemporary Studio Artist alum, Hambidge Fellow, and Idea Capital grantee, and her work has been published in Dialogue, Bad at Sports, MuseA, ArtsATL, BurnAway, and Numbers Inc., among others. She is currently represented by White Space Gallery-Atlanta, and has shown at Grizzly Grizzly-Philadelphia, MART-Dublin, Institute 193 Lexington, KY, PhotoNola, Day & Night Projects, Atlanta, University of Iowa, Atlanta Contemporary, and other galleries. Dowda DeMer curatorial projects include Practicexpractice, McCrary Gallery at Wesleyan College, and currently serves as Creative Director for the Lostintheletters Studio & Space, opening late summer 2025. She is the Art Editor of Brink Literary Journal and co-founder of the Atlanta-based creative writing festival, The Letters Festival. She has been awarded grants from the Georgia Council for the Arts, the Leonian Foundation, Fulton County Arts Council, Atlanta Mayor's Office, and others.
