Jeremiah Ariaz was raised in Kansas and is a Professor of Art at Louisiana State University. He received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and MFA from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His research-based practice is focused on examining the constructs of American identity within personal, community, media, and political contexts. For his most recently completed project Louisiana Trail Riders, he was the recipient of a 2018 ATLAS grant, the Michael P. Smith Award for Documentary Photography from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the 2018 South Arts Finalist Prize and named the Louisiana State Fellow. The photographs have been exhibited nationally, and a monograph of the work is available from UL Press (2018). His current project, The Fourth Estate, is focused on small town newspaper offices and the critical role they play in our shared democracy.
