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Photo-Role-Playing Tour, Artist Studio Visit: Northlight Gallery

Name: Photo-Role-Playing Tour, Artist Studio Visit: Northlight Gallery
Start: 2026-09-26T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2026-09-26T02:00:00.000Z
Location: Northlight Gallery

About This Event

Arizona Photography Alliance (AZPA) members will have the opportunity to meet and hear perspectives from curator and Director of Northlight Gallery, Dr. Cecilia Fajardo-Hill as she guides members through a private exhibition tour of Photo-Role-Playing. Work from AZPA members KJ Herb, Rennan Kooistra, and Dean Terasaki are included in this exhibition. The exhibition, Photo-Role-Playing, explores the relationship between photography and performance/performativity, involving embodiment, representation and self-representation, masquerading, enactment, role-play, body politics, gender and cultural identity. The evening will continue with a visit to the adjacent studio of Mehrdad Mirzaie, including discussions about his work. Mehrdad Mirzaie is an interdisciplinary artist, assistant curator, and educator currently based in Phoenix, Arizona. He received his MFA in Photography from Arizona State University in 2025 and is currently pursuing an MA in Art History, was recently awarded the 2026 Lenscratch 1st Place Student Prize for his project Garden. The tour is limited to 30 AZPA members.

#fine art #photography #educational #gallery #studio tour

Featured Artists

K.J. Herb

artist

Mehrdad Mirzaie

artist

Dean K. Terasaki

artist

Dean Terasaki is 'sansei,' a third-generation Japanese American. The discovery of his father's 442nd Regiment, WWII snapshots and memorabilia sparked his lifelong exploration of photography, memory, and the intersection of race and culture in society. As a young person searching for a future, Dean hopped freight trains, drove taxicabs, and realized that he seemed to carry a camera everywhere. A BFA from the University of Colorado (1978), a MFA in photography from Arizona State University (1985), a brief move to NYC, he returned to Phoenix where, for 33 years, he taught photography and digital imaging at Glendale Community College. Recently, a selection of his series, Veiled Inscriptions, was published online by Fraction Magazine (issue 177), and he was awarded a 2025 Artist to Work Grant by the Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture. Dean is currently co-president of the Eye Lounge Collective at Modified Arts and currently resides in Phoenix with his wife, Teri.

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Featured

Rennan Kooistra

artist

Rennan Kooistra is an emerging fine art photographer based in Phoenix Arizona. His artwork examines the interplay between social identity and psychodynamic theory. Rennan's captivating photographs depict underlying human behavior, emotions and feelings that are then contextualized into stories that define a person's group affiliations and self concepts. Rennan works with a variety of photographic media including digital, silver gelatin and alternative photographic process photography. Rennan is a member of the Arizona Photography Alliance and his work has been exhibited in the Arizona Capitol Museum, Mood Room, First Studio Gallery and various fine art galleries in and around the Southwestern United States.

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