About

"The people I photograph are those I have encountered. Sometimes we make plans, and sometimes I take a picture and we never even remember each other. But most of the time I leave those I photograph having heard and experienced something I never would have otherwise. My images are the experiences of every passing day in my life; the people in my photographs and I exchange thoughts regardless of how vastly our perspectives may differ. It’s a process that, with each individual, gives me a stronger and broader sense of the world, and a more nuanced understanding of the people I continue to meet.”

Alexandra Dietz is a freelance photographer based in Chicago IL. Her photography often focuses on groups or individuals that are socially stigmatized, judged, or unnoticed by larger society. In her provocative, often ambiguous style that can sometimes blur the boundaries between documentary work and portraiture, she seeks to question these perceptions, encouraging the viewer to see her subjects with new eyes and draw their own conclusions.

Alexandra’s travels and photography projects have taken her across the world, and she brings her keenly insightful eye to subjects as diverse as inhabitants of a wealthy Michigan suburb and painted dancers in Papua New Guinea.

Previous bodies of work include “Michigan Unnoticed”, focusing on a group of young people in impoverished rural Michigan, “Nudes A’ Poppin’”, documenting the annual nudist and stripping convention of the same name, “Kinks and Family”, juxtaposing the family and sexual lives of a group of Midwestern swingers, and “Hanging with Rebels”, which documents a twice-annual ride of the motorcycle gang The Rebel Riders to commemorate members of the gang who have passed away.

Alexandra holds a BFA in photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is currently documenting the lives and struggles of recently freed convicts for the Chicago Changing Minds Campaign.