Photography Educator: Natasha Lehner

Photography Educator: Natasha Lehner by Elizabeth StoneMay 15, 2026

©Natasha Lehner, From the project Blend Line

Photography Educator is a monthly series on Lenscratch. Once a month, we celebrate a dedicated photography teacher by sharing their insights, strategies and excellence in inspiring students of all ages. These educators play a vital role in student development, acting as mentors and guides who create environments where students feel valued and supported, fostering confidence and resilience.

I met Natasha Lehner a few years ago at Cassilhaus in North Carolina, and I was immediately struck by her photography, her deep commitment to her work and the intensity of her research. Her work sparks curiosity, with images that are both compelling and intellectually stimulating, inviting the viewer to dig deeper and stay longer. There is no doubt that she brings this same excellence to her teaching. As a new educator in photography, Natasha’s thoughtful responses to my interview questions reveal a clear and generous approach to sharing her knowledge. Her students are very fortunate to have such an inspiring and forward thinking teacher.

This article includes some of Natasha’s work from three projects, an interview and a small sampling of her student’s work.

Artist Statement
Photographs live in a constant state of flux, informed by their physical state, the context of their finding and the imagination of their viewer. Images are a symptom of history, infused and informed by how we perceive ourselves in the world and our positions within it. Cultural theorist John Tagg remarks in his essay Evidence, Truth and Order that “Photographs are never ‘evidence’ of history, they are themselves the historical”. This quote summates my belief in the power of images as not only historical artifacts but as constantly evolving objects.

The autonomy achieved by images once freed from their evidentiary context allows for endlessly recontextualized interpretation. This interpretive spirit informs my ongoing series In Waiting, where I collect found photographs and pair them with excerpts from Emily Dickinson’s poem I Sing to use the Waiting. The images in this series relate to each other in their explorative nature just as the female subjects seem to be searching or voyaging towards a shared and expansive future.

My impetus for a larger project, Iron Sights, was the 1874 transit of Venus. On this occasion, French astronomer Pierre Jules César Janssen inaugurated his invention the Janssen revolver, later known as the photographic revolver. The revolver captured the first ever images of Venus silhouetted against the Sun and marked the beginning of chronophotography. Jenssen adapted the revolving cylinders originally designed for a pistol to house not bullets but a series of light sensitive plates that would be exposed in rapid succession. This curious invention ignited my interest in the parallel histories of photography and weaponry, both technologically and metaphorically. I was especially intrigued by the intervention of women in these respective fields. Through the use of archival tactical training manuals and photographic guide books for women, I generated a series of guidelines for my images taken at the In Her Piece and the Women of Steel gun clubs in North Carolina. The resulting photographs offer a contemporary dialogue surrounding the power of visibility and the positioning of women within the larger histories of photography and weaponry.

Finally, there has never been a lifespan of images more vital to my practice than the photographs taken by my recently discovered biological grandfather, Harvey Karman. Harvey was an inventor and a radical women’s rights advocate who spent much of his life operating an underground abortion clinic in Los Angeles prior to the legalization of abortion. He was also active in the emerging field of fertility where he gave women, such as my grandmother, an option of motherhood she would not have otherwise had. Upon discovering my biological grandfather’s identity three years ago, I embarked upon a long term research project attempting to learn as much as possible about a man I can never and will never have the opportunity to meet. This discovery has introduced me to an entirely new family and presented me with an overwhelming archive of his life through media portrayals, personal accounts and, later, his own words and images. Through the process of uncovering Harvey’s personal writings and photographs I encountered a more intimate version of this complex man, one that reveals a shared likeness to myself just below the surface. From this material I have produced a graduate thesis exhibition and publication entitled More of Everything. In More of Everything, I intertwine images and words created nearly 70 years apart by my biological grandfather, my father, and myself to create an imaginative union of three generations that never had the opportunity to exist as one. Lastly, through the use of archival media materials featuring my biological grandfather, I recontextualize the ethical conversations which surrounded Harvey’s work as an abortionist in a modern framework, at a time when access to quality care for women is once again threatened just as much as it was 70 years ago.

While these four projects differ in subject matter, they are connected by their investigative spirit and vested interest in discovering the world that lives within and beyond the image, the archival materials structuring and informing the images I create in response. Lastly, and most important for me, these projects have required an outreach and connection that would not have been possible without the participation and collaboration of community and family members alike.

©Natasha Lehner, From the project Blend Line

©Natasha Lehner, From the project Blend Line

©Natasha Lehner, From the project Blend Line

©Natasha Lehner, From the project Blend Line

ES: Tell me about your background in photography and how you got into teaching. Did you always want to be a teacher?

NL: Photography has been in my life for as long as I can remember and that is entirely to my parents’ credit. My father bought me my first camera from our local antique store when I was five years old. It was an Olympus Trip 35 that I still have and use regularly to this day. To my memory, there was always film in arms reach and constant encouragement to keep photographing.

My desire to be an educator is also something I credit entirely to my parents. Both my mother and my father teach English and from a young age, I made up my mind that teaching was the only occupation that could really add value to my life. My parents also showed me what it means to be a lifelong learner. They are both writers and artists in their own right and have proven to be uncompromising with each and every creative pursuit that they undertake. I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to lead by their example and to forge my own path with that same spirit.

ES: Did you have an influential photography mentor or teacher? What was their biggest impact on you?

NL: During my junior year of college, I met a professor that would change my life forever. Her name is Rachel Boillot and she has been the guiding light in life ever since our first meeting seven years ago. Though, unbeknownst to us, our story actually started much earlier. In our first interaction, Rachel and I discovered that my father was her high school English teacher. She often remarked how familiar I looked and only years later did we realize that our paths crossed while she was a senior in high school and I was in preschool. If I was lucky, my father would take me to work with him and when I did, I would sit in the front of the classroom and draw portraits of all the students. Rachel was one of those students.
Rachel’s class was a revelation to me. In the few short months that I studied under her, it became abundantly clear that I was going to pursue a life in photography with all my might, only because she gave me the strength to believe I could. She has been a constant source of support and creative inspiration to me ever since. I could only ever hope to impact my students in all the vast ways that Rachel had impacted my life.

ES: What keeps you engaged as an educator?

NL: I see my teaching as being highly collaborative. I often say that I am learning from my students just as much as they are learning from me. And with every amazing cohort of students I receive each semester, this statement is only made more truthful. I also believe that my students will only ever be as invested in me as I am in them. I work to strengthen connections with my students and engage with their lives outside the classroom to better understand what kind of contributions they can make in the classroom. So much of what we see is informed by the life we lead and I aim to celebrate all the ways in which we see things differently.

ES: How do you integrate your experience as an artist and the other jobs you’ve had into your teaching practice?

NL: Much of the time, a life in the arts can seem vague, non-linear and incredibly daunting. And while I know all of the above to be true, I mitigate that as best I can by giving my students the fullest transparency about my career and my trajectory. I’ve held a variety of jobs’ assisting artists, managing galleries, interning at museums, managing photo facilities, assisting workshops, directing post production…the list goes on. I remind my students that it is just a valuable to learn and understand what you don’t want to do as it is to clearly see what you do want to do. I encourage my students to try everything, to reach out to everyone and to explore all options. But above all, to learn how to live creatively. So much of managing a life in the arts comes down to making the seemingly impossible become possible and that can only be done by harnessing the same creativity we channel in the studio and taking that out into the world with us.

ES: What are some challenges you face as a teacher in the arts in this moment of time?

NL: I think many of my students feel overwhelmed by the ever changing state of the world and struggle to see how their images can exist within our already extremely imaged existence. We are surrounded by images that inform our lives every hour of every day and what I tell my students is that photography does not have to present a way of knowing, but a means of understanding. If the images we make can help us to better understand the world around us and our place within it, that to me is the greatest triumph.