Photography Educator: Lindsay Metivier

Photography Educator: Lindsay Metivier by Elizabeth StoneFebruary 21, 2026

©Lindsay Metivier

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 transformative role in student development, acting as mentors and guides who create environments where students feel valued and supported, fostering confidence and resilience.

For February, I am delighted to feature the work of artist and educator Lindsay Metivier. I have a deep appreciation for Lindsay’s work as an artist, how she sees the world and translates it through the camera. Her photographs read like poems with a sideways glance, revealing the everyday in spectacular color. I recently discovered Lindsay’s deep influence and accomplishments as an educator. She cultivates her students’ curiosity, broadens their perspectives, and encourages them to engage the world with honesty. Her teaching practice reflects the same attentiveness found in her art, fostering a classroom environment rooted in exploration and creative dialogue. In this article, you’ll find selections from some of Lindsay’s projects, along with photographs and testimonials from her students, and her thoughts on her evolving practice as both an artist and educator. Enjoy.

Slow seeing. Re-seeing. A quiet insistence that meaning can live in the subtle shift in what you missed the first time. Or the fifth.

My work reads like a diary of sleepless weeks. Filled with observations recorded in the crepuscular half light bridging darkness and dawn it evokes that hovering state; where memory isn’t memory so much as the brain seeing its own contents in the moment. These are the hours when company is scarce, limited mainly to deer, much like these images, their consciousness continuously flickering and liminal.

©Lindsay Metivier, Pool Cups from the series “Almost No Memory”, 2016

ES: How did you get into teaching photography?
LM: I grew up in and around Burlington, Vermont. I’m not sure that the location influenced my career path but the active local music and arts scene paired with my high school art teachers mentorship helped me to fully immerse myself in my passions, meeting and engaging with a community who taught me that art making is a possible career/life path. One teacher in particular showed me care and consideration that was so meaningful to me in high school after my father passed away. I always strive to make students feel the way that Julian Bradshaw made me feel.
ES: What keeps you engaged as an educator?
LM: My students keep me challenged and engaged as an educator. They are inspiring. They ask direct and sometimes uncomfortable questions, and they are quick to sense when something feels unresolved. It requires me to stay open and engaged with photography as a living practice.
ES: How do you connect with your students?
LM: I’m open with my students. Some might say I’m a chronic oversharer but I believe that being real with people shows them that it’s safe to be real with you. We do check-ins at the beginning of class, we go around and each student has a minute to share about their day or about their work. This is a way for me to connect with them but also for them to connect with one another.
I try to understand where students are coming from rather than imposing a single definition of success. I am open about my own questions and struggles, which helps create a space where students feel comfortable taking risks and talking about them.
ES: How do you encourage curiosity and the creative process in your classes?
LM: I often work with few constraints. By limiting certain technical choices, students can focus more fully on ideas and observation. Many assignments involve repetition, duration, or returning to the same subject over time. I want students to experience photography as a way of thinking, living and breathing, rather than a means of producing images quickly.

©Lindsay Metivier, Car Wash from the series “Home Range”, 2018

©Lindsay Metivier, Cemetery Deer from the series “Home Range”

©Lindsay Metivier, In Fidelity Court, 2021

ES: What career accomplishments feel most meaningful to you?
LM: I tend to think less about individual achievements and more about sustained impact. Seeing students continue to make work, take risks, and trust their ideas over time feels meaningful. I am also proud of building spaces, both educational and curatorial, that support thoughtful and challenging work. I opened my first art space, Aviary, in Boston when I was 25. 10 years later I opened Peel Gallery + Photo Lab in Carrboro, North Carolina.
ES: How do you integrate your experience as a working artist into your teaching?
LM: I am transparent about what it means to sustain a creative practice. That includes uncertainty, rejection, slow periods or periods of way too much happening at once. I bring those realities into critiques and discussions so students can understand photography as a way of life.
My students visit my business and typically have a lot of questions, as do I, about how the place pays its own rent (it doesn’t yet).
ES: Where do you find inspiration?
LM: Since 2007 I’ve been purchasing an art book every month. It began as a New Year’s resolution to make sure to immerse myself in new artists and artworks that weren’t just people I’d stumbled upon on photo blogs (and eventually social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook). Some artists, writers and filmmakers who have impacted my photographs and the way I see photographs include Wolfgang Tillmans, Lydia Davis, David Lynch, Penelope Umbrico, Susan Hiller, William Eggleston and Molly Nilsson.

©Lindsay Metivier, Food Wall Friday, 2016

©Lindsay Metivier, Another Day from the series “Field Recordings”, 2025

©Lindsay Metivier, OCSC 10122025

©Lindsay Metivier, Orange Peel, 2024

©Lindsay Metivier, Carrboro Peels #43 for the series “Almost No Memory”, 2024

©Lindsay Metivier

©Lindsay Metivier, Cat Mouth from the series “Almost No Memory”, 2025

©Lindsay Metivier

©Lindsay Metivier, Selections from the series “The Corner”, Installation of Polaroids, 2025

ES: What challenges do you face as a teacher in the arts?
LM: One challenge is helping students navigate external pressures while still protecting their creative instincts. Another is knowing when to guide and when to step back so students can arrive at their own conclusions. A third challenge is job uncertainty. With the world being as scary as it is right now, Arts departments are losing funding everyday. Adjuncting was hard before this and it’s extra hard now.
ES: What is your vision for the future of photography education?
LM: I hope photography education continues to prioritize critical thinking, visual literacy, and ethical awareness. Tools and platforms will continue to change. The ability to think clearly and responsibly with images will remain essential.
ES: What advice do you give to photography students?
LM: Make work that feels necessary to you before thinking about an audience. Look at work outside of photography. Watch anything by David Lynch. Allow yourself time to move slowly and to question your assumptions. Revisit. Go see art in your communities. Adopt a dog from a rescue or shelter (this is advice I give everyone but maybe don’t listen to me I have five dogs, a cat, a tortoise, two birds and a lot of fish).

Thank you Lindsay. Your students are very lucky to have you as a teacher.

STUDENT WORK

©Antonio Bailey, Contortion

©Antonio Bailey, Mirrors

Antonio Bailey
I had the pleasure to work with Lindsay Metivier during my BFA degree at UNC-Greensboro and at her gallery, Peel. Lindsay quickly became a mentor to me, and her teaching methods changed the way I looked at photography, encouraging me to push my creative boundaries. Inside her classroom she gave each of us the attention and encouragement we needed to make our photos come to life. One lesson I learned from Lindsay was during a group critique that I now use in my classroom. Her warm and lively mood melted away our worries and allowed us to open up about our dreams and desires with image making. So now in my classroom, I allow my students to be themselves, to feel welcomed and through that they will feel more comfortable sharing their goals of photography.
Instagram:@antonioxbailey
Website: www.antoniobailey.com

Qiaoan “Joseph” Gu
Lindsay Metivier was my darkroom and digital photography instructor for nearly all of the photo classes I took at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as an undergraduate. Lindsay was one of the most popular instructors among art and non-art majors. Her classes were always lively, authentic, and filled with the sharing of everyone’s experiences. Not only are her classes a pleasant experience, Lindsay provides her students a vast set of knowledge and pushes students just the right amount to achieve more. During her classes, we would often have field trips to Duke University’s Nasher Museum and her gallery and photo lab (Peel Gallery + Photo Lab) in downtown Carrboro, NC, where I later did an internship there. During the internship, she was very patient and willing to collaborate with all of us on planning or developing new techniques/strategies to fulfill specific photo lab orders. It is inspiring to see the resourcefulness of her working at her own gallery.

Lindsay Metivier strives to support all her students in and out of the classroom. I feel like I could always share my new works or ideas with her, even long after graduation, and she would appreciate the sharing and provide constructive feedback.
Instagram: @joseph_photo_stash

About Lindsay
Lindsay Metivier is a photographer, an educator, a curator, and a gallerist based in Carrboro, North Carolina. She holds a BFA in both Photography and Art Education from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and an MFA in Studio Art from UNC Chapel Hill. From 2011 to 2021, she was the proprietor of Aviary Gallery, an exhibition space and photo lab located in Boston, Massachusetts. In 2020, Lindsay opened an art space called Peel Gallery + Photo Lab in Carrboro, North Carolina. Her work has been exhibited widely, most recently at the Hillsborough Arts Council Gallery, LUMP gallery, Oneoneone Gallery, The Nasher Museum at Duke University, The Ackland Art Museum at UNC Chapel Hill, The John and June Allcott Gallery, The Front Gallery, and Transmitter. Her work has been featured on The Heavy Collective, Humble Arts Foundation, and A New Nothing. Her work has been featured on the cover of Oxford American Magazine and in Chapel Hill Magazine and Chatham Magazine.

Websites: www.lindsaymetivier.com, www.peel.gallery
IG @lindsaymetivier