art-based philosopher
Foto: Daniel Robles
Alejandro León Cannock – lives and works in Arles
Researcher, curator, visual artist, and lecturer
He holds a PhD in Artistic Research from the École nationale supérieure de la photographie (ENSP) in Arles and Aix-Marseille University. He is currently a Non-Tenured Teaching and Research Fellow (Attaché Temporaire d’Enseignement et de Recherche, ATER) at Aix-Marseille University. He served as curator of the Peruvian
Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Art Biennale. In 2025, he was awarded the Research and Creation Grant from the Institut pour la photographie in Lille (France).
Within the epistemological and methodological framework of the performative paradigm of research (art as research), his projects unfold at the intersection of the life of images (aesthetics), the exercise of thought (philosophy), and the distribution of the real (politics). His current research explores the strategies employed by
contemporary artistic practice—particularly in the field of photography—to question extractivist thinking while proposing an ecosophical ethos.
Among his recent curatorial projects are Barbara Brändli. Poetics of Gesture, Politics of the Document (PhotoEspaña 2024) and Seeing by Contact. Photograms 2014–2024 (Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano, 2024). His most recent publications include: “Seeing / Knowing: Photographic Practice as Artistic Research” (Marges. Revue d’art contemporain, 2024) and “Photographing the ‘Bowels of the Earth’: Notes on Contemporary Latin American Photography” (DongGang Photography Festival Catalog, 2024).