Mary Defer (she/her) is a Lakewood, Ohio-based artist primarily working with analog photography. Her work centersaround the unreliable nature of memory, the natural world, and the unearthing of family history. Raised on a familyfarm, she discovered a love of photography her first semester of college, when she enrolled in an introductory courseand found the darkroom to be a quiet refuge from anxiety. Defer received a BA with distinction in Studio Art fromKenyon College in 2014 and, since then, has dedicated herself to independent study of alternative processes. She isinspired by artists such as Keliy Anderson-Staley and Lia Halloran, who address contemporary social issues throughhistoric photographic techniques.

Defer’s work has been exhibited both regionally and nationally through organizations such as Praxis Fiber Workshop(Cleveland, OH), the Erie Art Museum (Erie, PA), Soho Photo Gallery (New York, NY), and the Filter Photo Festival(Chicago, IL). In 2012, a book of her photography was included in “DIY: Photographers & Books,” the first-evermuseum exhibition of print-on-demand photobooks at the Cleveland Museum of Art.