ABOUT
SUSANNAH HAYS MFA, PhD is a pragmatic thinker and educator whose fine art photographs reveal the essential systems that interconnect our universe, from the smallest leaf to the cosmos itself. Seeing shadow within form and form within shadow, she follows in the footsteps of Henry Fox Talbot and other early pioneers of photographic image-making, searching for clues that connect the photographer to the essence of the medium and to the impulse that lies at the heart of photographic expression. Sensitive to both the language of photography and the visual signifiers present within her immediate surroundings, her work unfolds through a dynamic and imaginative exchange with our In/Visible Cosmos. Her photographs have been widely exhibited and are held in numerous private and public collections, including Stanford University and Yale University, whose photography holdings are among the most significant in the United States.
Serving on the faculty of the San Francisco Art Institute's Photography Department from 2002 to 2012, Hays completed her doctorate in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2016. Her dissertation Nature as Discourse: A Co-evolutionary Systems Approach to Art and Environmental Design investigates how a transdisciplinary approach to the Humanities might recalibrate single-discipline learning through experiential practices that engage, integrate, and expand mind-body perception and awareness.
As an independent researcher and consultant, she has assisted organizations advancing transdisciplinary and integral principles. Emerging in the late twentieth century, this international movement draws upon systems thinking and insights from quantum nonlocality to explore a more integrative understanding of reality. In doing so, it seeks a dialogue between Gnostic and contemplative traditions of the East and the empirical traditions of the West. Hays is an active member of Le Centre International de Recherches et Études Transdisciplinaires (CIRET), based in Paris and serves on the advisory board of the Intropy=Entropy Institute in San Francisco.
Originally trained as an archivist and paper conservator, Susannah Hays currently assists individual artists and nonprofit organizations in the stewardship of their collections, providing expertise in inventory development, visual and written documentation, preservation planning, and curatorial and exhibition programming. She provides both short- and long-term strategic planning, often implemented in stages according to a collection's size, needs, and budget. Hays also serves as the curatorial estate administrator for Sean Haley Thackery’s photographic collection, which moved from Bolinas, California to Taos, New Mexico in 2026.
Susannah is represented by Galleria il Pozzo, Cortona, Italy, and Photo-Eye Gallery and Photo-Eye Books + Project Space in Santa Fe. She lives and works in Arroyo Seco, New Mexico.
Printable:
“We are each born at a certain instant from a seed and just as sure as the solar and lunar systems cycle around us, we inherit our ancestral lineage —the blueprint/membrane of our Being.
From the soil of our planet earth, we are given the potential to engage our human spirit in the endeavor of coming to understand our evolutionary bodies.
The photographer’s role brings light to the invisible, comprehension to the incomprehensible. ”