Rate My Professor Rebecca Sittler

Rebecca Sittler, Professor Emeritus of Photography in the School of Art at California State University, Long Beach, advanced the field of Arts and Culture through her dedicated academic and artistic career. She received her Master of Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art. Serving as Program Head of the Photography Program, Sittler fostered an expanded understanding of image-making among students through photography, performance, and video art. The program, under her leadership, provided undergraduate options including a BFA in Photography, BA in Art, and a Minor in Photography. Courses emphasized technical proficiency in analog and digital camera operation, editing, darkroom printing, alternative processes, alongside critical analysis, writing skills, and professional practices. Faculty hosted visiting artists for lectures, panels, studio visits, and symposiums, equipping graduates for advanced MFA studies, residencies, exhibitions, and careers in fashion, editorial, or commercial imaging while promoting thoughtful image construction and circulation.

Sittler’s research specializations include Photography and Expanded Photographic Practice, Artist Books, Photographic Archives, Machine Learning, Cognition surrounding Objects and Images, Gender and Representation, and the Relationship between Photography and Narrative Fiction. Her photographic work explores museum displays and still-life objects assembled in the studio or found in the world, featuring projects on gendered representations in U.S. presidential museums, the volatility of photography via the Queen Mary ocean liner, still-lifes inspired by Gertrude Stein prose poems, speculative archives of female stowaways and sailors, and products from Long Beach independent donut shops. This engages playful activation of interpretive networks, contrasting insignificance and monumentality, animate and inanimate, historical and hypothetical. She exhibited at Filter Space Gallery, Sam Lee Gallery, Daniel Cooney Gallery, Photographic Center Northwest, Torrance Museum of Art, Griffin Museum, Atlantic Center for the Arts, RayKo Gallery, Photographic Resource Center, Duke University, University of Florida, Texas Woman’s University, Boston University, Washington State University, and internationally in Russia, South Korea, China, and England.