Working across art and anthropology, her research explores contemporary Land Art and its premodern antecedents as sites of perception, embodiment, and creative inquiry, examining how art made directly in the landscape discloses material, phenomenological, and spiritual dimensions of human experience. Her broader interests include the anthropology of art, the confluence of creativity and the natural world, ritual and pilgrimage, myth, spatial theory and liminality, and sensory and multimodal approaches to ethnography.
Previously, she was senior photography editor at The New Yorker, where she conceived and commissioned award-winning visuals. Earlier, she served as photography editor at The New York Times Magazine.
As a commissioning editor, her work engaged the historical, political, social, and aesthetic practices shaping contemporary culture, and included collaborations with artists such as Chris Ofili, Catherine Opie, and Malick Sidibé. During her tenure at The New Yorker, Siobhán produced a prismatic range of stories, from features addressing racial inequity and gender politics to essays on archival and museum practices, as well as surveys of the work of artists Mark Bradford, Michael Heizer, Alex Katz, Deana Lawson, Wolfgang Tillmans, James Turrell, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. As visuals editor for fiction, she conceived artwork for stories by writers including Haruki Murakami, George Saunders and Zadie Smith. She has travelled extensively on assignment, from producing stories on political refugees along the Myanmar border to a portrait sitting at the White House with then-President Barack Obama.
Beyond commissioning work, she has curated visual projects drawn from archival research in private collections and foundations, in addition to institutions such as the Smithsonian and the Beinecke Library. Siobhán has consulted on projects and publications for Aperture Foundation, the International Center of Photography, and the Museum of Modern Art – and has served as a guest critic and speaker at Yale School of Art, School of Visual Arts, Cooper Union, and Pratt Institute.
Siobhán holds an M.Sc. with Distinction from the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oxford and a BFA from Central Saint Martins.
Beyond commissioning work, she has curated visual projects drawn from archival research in private collections and foundations, in addition to institutions such as the Smithsonian and the Beinecke Library. Siobhán has consulted on projects and publications for Aperture Foundation, the International Center of Photography, and the Museum of Modern Art – and has served as a guest critic and speaker at Yale School of Art, School of Visual Arts, Cooper Union, and Pratt Institute.
Siobhán holds an M.Sc. with Distinction from the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oxford and a BFA from Central Saint Martins.
For collaborations around interdisciplinary research, pedagogy, and creative practice, please get in touch.
Email: siobhan.bohnacker@anthro.ox.ac.uk
Social: @siobhanbohnacker