Mercedes Jelinek

About the Artist

Mercedes Jelinek is an American artist and photographer based in Brooklyn, New York, whose work explores the breadth of human experience through portraiture, narrative, and experimental approaches to the photographic image. She holds a BFA in Visual Arts from the State University of New York at Purchase and an MFA from Louisiana State University. Jelinek has taught and lectured extensively, serving as a professor, visiting artist, and resident at institutions across the United States and Italy, including East Carolina University in Certaldo, Italy, Penland School of Craft, The New School Parsons, and the Yale University School of Art. She is an active board member of both Blue Sky Gallery (Portland, OR) and Penland School of Craft (Penland, NC), contributing to the advancement of contemporary photography and craft education. Her work and publications have been exhibited nationally and internationally, and her photographs are included in the permanent collections of some of the world’s most influential institutions: the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum, Library of Congress, Aperture Foundation, and the Getty Institute. Jelinek is known for her black-and-white portraiture, often pushing beyond traditional photographic boundaries by integrating painting, collage, and mixed-media processes. Her practice is rooted in deep curiosity about people — their stories, values, and cultural identities. She travels widely, immersing herself in the communities she photographs, creating work built on collaboration, trust, and shared experience. Her imagery reflects the complexity of contemporary life, engaging with themes of community, identity, and women’s rights within the shifting socio-political landscape of the post-COVID era, the “Me Too” movement, and the aftermath of Roe v. Wade’s overturning. Through her work, she invites viewers into a visual dialogue that is intimate, empathetic, and unafraid to confront the realities shaping the modern human condition.