Alise Tifentale. Photo: Anna Dave.
Brief Bio
Dr. Alise Tifentale is an art and photography historian, writer, editor, curator, and educator based in New York City. She received her Ph.D. in Art History from the City University of New York in 2020. Her current research and writing focus on the global photo-club culture and the transnational networks of photographers and clubs in the mid-century (ca. 1950-1965).
Her fields of expertise are interdisciplinary and include the sociology of culture, art history, visual culture, photography history and theory, social media studies, and transnational cultural networks. Her secondary field of expertise covers selected topics in Soviet, post-Soviet, and Eastern European art history. Since 1998 she has written extensively about contemporary art, history of art and photography in Latvia and the Baltic region.
Alise Tifentale is the author of The Photograph as Art in Latvia, 1960-1969 (2011); the author or editor of several other books about photography; and the author of three fiction books published in Latvian and German.
Her scholarly articles have appeared in journals such as Art History & Theory, ARTMargins, CAA.Reviews, Communication Today, Foto Kvartals, MoMA Post, Networking Knowledge, PhotoResearcher, Russian Art & Culture, Scriptus Manet, Social Sciences, Studija, and others. She has contributed chapters to volumes such as Routledge Companion to Photography and Visual Culture (2018), Exploring the Selfie: Historical, Analytical, and Theoretical Approaches to Digital Self-Photography (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), The History of European Photography 1970–2000 (Central European House of Photography, 2016), and Postdigital Aesthetics: Art, Computation, and Design (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
Education, Research, Curating, and Teaching (longer bio)
Since 2020, Alise Tifentale is the curator of Art Days Forever, the archive and estate of two artists, photographer Zenta Dzividzinska (1944-2011) and painter Juris Tifentals (1943-2001).
Alise Tifentale at the exhibition "Sophie Thun and Zenta Dzividzinska. I Don't Remember a Thing: Entering the Elusive Estate of ZDZ” in Kim? contemporary art center, Riga, Latvia. 2021. The exhibition featured the photographic archive and of Zenta Dzividzinska (1944-2011).
Her fields of expertise are interdisciplinary and include the sociology of culture, art history, visual culture, photography history and theory, social media studies, and transnational cultural networks. Since 1998 she has written extensively about contemporary and media art, the history of art and photography in Latvia, and selected topics in Soviet, post-Soviet, and Eastern European art and visual culture.
Between May 2020 and May 2022, Tifentale served on the visual arts experts’ committee at the State Culture Capital Foundation, the main arts funding institution in Latvia.
While working as a Research Fellow at the Cultural Analytics Lab led by media and culture theorist Lev Manovich and based at the City University of New York (2013–2018), she has co-authored social media research projects such as Selfiecity (2014), Selfiecity London (2015), and The Exceptional and the Everyday: 144 Hours in Kyiv (2014), and contributed to The Aggregate Eye: 13 Cities / 312,694 People / 2,353,017 Photos (2013) and On Broadway: Representing Life in the 21st Century City through Social Media Images and Data (2014).
Alise Tifentale is the author of two books, The Photograph as Art in Latvia, 1960–1969 (2011) and Photographer Alnis Stakle (2009), and the editor of several other books about photography.
Her articles are published in journals such as Art History & Theory, ARTMargins, CAA.Reviews, Communication Today, Foto Kvartals, MoMA Post, Networking Knowledge, PhotoResearcher, Russian Art & Culture, Scriptus Manet, Social Sciences, Studija, and others. She has contributed chapters to volumes such as Routledge Companion to Photography and Visual Culture (2018), Exploring the Selfie: Historical, Analytical, and Theoretical Approaches to Digital Self-Photography (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), The History of European Photography 1970–2000 (Central European House of Photography, 2016), and Postdigital Aesthetics: Art, Computation, and Design (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
Education
Alise Tifentale received her Ph.D. in Art History from the City University of New York (2020). Her doctoral dissertation, The “Olympiad of Photography”: FIAP and the Global Photo-Club Culture, 1950–1965, deals with the shifting social and cultural status of photographers in the 1950s on a global level. The dissertation was defended in November 2019 and the committee comprised Siona Wilson, Romy Golan, Anna Indych-López, and Karen Strassler.
Tifentale also has received an M.Phil. (Master of Philosophy) in Art History from the City University of New York (2015), an M.A. in Art History from the Art Academy of Latvia (2010), and a B.A. in Information and Communication Studies from the University of Latvia (1998).
Research
From November 2019 to March 2021, Alise Tifentale was a visiting Researcher at the Communication Studies department at the Riga Stradins University (RSU), Riga, Latvia.
During her time at the RSU, Tifentale led a consortium of five Latvian research institutions that won a nation-wide competition to implement a State Research Program project in social sciences, “Life with COVID-19: Evaluation of overcoming the coronavirus crisis in Latvia and recommendations for societal resilience in the future" (VPP-COVID-2020/1-0013). The grant amount was 497,580.00 EUR, the project involved more than 88 scholars who worked from July 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021 and produced 11 reports to the Latvian decision-makers, more than 62 international scholarly publications, 3 open access research tools, and open access data in 2 repositories. The main areas of research in the project were the media, sociology, social services, and education. Basic information on the project in English is here, and here is the full description of the project and its findings after its completion.
In early 2020, she co-authored (with Dr. Ilva Skulte) the Journalism in the Era of Disinformation (JEDI) program at the RSU, created with the US Department of State-sponsored IREX Media Literacy in the Baltics grant.
From August 2013 to December 2018, Alise Tifentale was as a Research Fellow at the Cultural Analytics Lab, led by Dr. Lev Manovich, the world's leading media and culture theorist and Professor of Computer Science at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. While working in the lab, Tifentale has co-authored research projects on social media photography such as Selfiecity (2014), Selfiecity London (2015), and The Exceptional and the Everyday: 144 Hours in Kyiv (2014). See her publications discussing the findings of these projects in the articles section.
Curating and editorial work
As an independent curator, Tifentale has curated several exhibitions featuring contemporary art, photography, and video such as the exhibition North by North East for the pavilion of Latvia at the 55th Venice Art Biennale (Venice, Italy, 2013), co-curated with Anne Barlow and Courtenay Finn, and the exhibition Private. Contemporary Photography from Latvia (Moscow, Russia, 2008 and Riga, Latvia, 2009).
In 2005, Tifentale established photography magazine Foto Kvartals and served as its editor-in-chief until 2010. Since 2011, the magazine has continued as an online-only publication with a different publisher and editorial staff.
From 2002 to 2008 Alise Tifentale was an editor of Latvia art news and a regular contributor to the visual arts magazine Studija.
Teaching
Since fall 2022 Alise Tifentale has been an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art History at City University of New York, Kingsborough. She teaches various art history and history of photography courses also at the City University of New York, Queensborough (since spring 2024), Marywood University (since spring 2024), and the State University of New York, Old Westbury (since spring 2023).
As a guest lecturer, Tifentale has taught art history research methods (Art Academy of Latvia, fall 2021 and spring 2024), photography history and theory, media literacy, and social media literacy (Riga Stradins University (2020-2021). She co-organized a photography research symposium and summer school “Mapping Methods and Materials” and taught a photography research methods seminar there (summer 2021).
Other courses that Alise Tifentale has taught include undergraduate surveys of art history at York College (2012-2013) and Bronx Community College (2013) in New York City, graduate-level media theory and history of photography classes at the Liepaja University, Latvia (2010-2011), and undergraduate history of photography and photography exhibition management classes at the Latvian Culture College in Riga, Latvia (2010-2011).
Contact me
Contact me for a recent and full CV or with any other professional inquiries: atifentale at gradcenter dot cuny dot edu.