Michal Raz-Russo is programs director at The Gordon Parks Foundation and editor of Gordon Parks Foundation/Steidl Book Prize publications. She served as visiting curator at the Art Institute of Chicago for the exhibitions Subscribe: Artists and Alternative Magazines, 1970–95 (2021) and Basma al-Sharif: Capital (2022). Previously, she was the David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Associate Curator of Photography at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she curated exhibitions such as Never a Lovely So Real: Photography and Film in Chicago, 1950–1980 (2018); Leigh Ledare: The Plot (2017); Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem (2016); Deana Lawson (2015); and The Three Graces (2011). In addition to authoring catalogues accompanying the exhibitions Invisible Man and The Three Graces, Raz-Russo was editor of LaToya Ruby Frazier: Flint Is Family In Three Acts (2021), and has contributed scholarship to publications including Icons of Style: A Century of Fashion Photography, 1911–2011 (2018). 

"An important part of the Black arts movement is this idea of being aware of what your role is as a witness, and how that might impact the kind of stories that you're trying to tell." Michal Raz-Russo