Zora J. Murff

Zora J Murff (born 1987) is an American artist, curator, and educator. He is currently based in Eugene, Oregon and teaches photography at the University of Oregon's School of Art + Design. Murff uses his creative practice to emphasize visual culture's entanglements with race, capitalism, and other forms of hierarchical oppression. Murff studied and has practiced photography expansively including collage and assemblage, but he also works with sculpture, installation, text works, and sound. Murff has also taught photography at the University of Arkansas' School of Art, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University.

Life and work

Murff was born in 1987 in Des Moines, Iowa, to an African-American working class family. He studied for a BS in psychology from Iowa State University.

Following his graduation in 2010, took a job as a Tracker for Linn County Juvenile Detention and Diversion Services in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Murff enrolled at the University of Iowa to study photography at the same time. He photographed the children that he worked with, which resulted in Corrections, his final-year BA project, "about a system that too often fails the disenfranchised youth to whom it has a duty of care". The Corrections photo series images were taken from 2013 to 2015. "about a system that too often fails the disenfranchised youth to whom it has a duty of care". The Corrections photo series images were taken from 2013 to 2015, and explores a "contradictory relationship that Murff acknowledges [...], between his effort to build trust with the young people and his position as a tracker to make sure they followed court orders, while securing their willingness to be photographed." He published the work as a monograph in 2015 with Aint-Bad Magazine. Murff has continued to create work about incarceration in America.

After concluding his studies at the University of Iowa, Murff enrolled in the MFA studio art program at the University of NebraskaÃ¢ÂÂLincoln. In April 2018, he launched his thesis exhibition Re-Making the Mark, a mixture of photography and sculpture focused on the historical impacts of redlining in North Omaha, a Historically African-American neighborhood in Omaha, Nebraska. His second monograph Lost: Omaha, includes some work from Re-Making the Mark. His later monograph, At No Point In Between also includes work originally contained within his series Lost: Omaha. At No Point In Between won the Independent category of the 2019 Lucie Foundation Photobook Prize. In 2020, Murff won the Next Step Award, a collaborative award between Aperture Foundation, 7|G Foundation, and the Baxter Street Camera Club of New York, meant, "...to identify strong emerging or evolving voices whose work deserves greater recognition." As a part of the award, Murff published his fourth monograph, True Colors (or, Affirmations in a Crisis) with Aperture Foundation. The publication is a survey of the artist's practice and visual culture and includes multiple contributions from other artists and writers. Murff's debut museum solo exhibition, RACE/HUSTLE, opened at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in 2025. The exhibition was curated by Terence Washington and examines, "...physical, psychic, and political violence, the rhythms and resonances of oppression throughout history and into the present, and the harmful desires that our visual culture cultivates."

Murff taught Photography at the University of Arkansas School of Art from 2018Ã¢ÂÂ2023 and at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University from 2023Ã¢ÂÂ2025. In 2025, he joined the faculty at the University of Oregon. He was also a co-curator of Strange Fire Artist Collective (formed in 2015) with artists Jess T. Dugan and Rafael Soldi, and curator Hamidah Glasgow and departed the collective in 2020. In 2019, he was an artist-in-resident at Light Work in Syracuse, NY. In 2024, Murff was an artist-in-residence at the Center for Photography at Woodstock. In 2023, Murff was awarded the Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography.

Publications of Individual Work

Corrections. Savanna, GA: Aint-Bad, 2015. . Edition of 450 copies. With a foreword by Pete Brook.
Lost: Omaha. Brooklyn, NY: Kris Graves, 2018. One volume in a collection of 10. With an essay by Lisa Riordan Seville. . First edition, 125 copies. First edition (second printing), 100 copies.
At No Point In Between. Dais, 2019. . With an essay by Terence Washington and an afterword by Lisa Riordan Seville. Edition of 155 copies.
True Colors (or, Affirmations in a Crisis). Brooklyn, NY: Aperture, 2022. . First edition.

Publication as Author

Murff, Young, et. al., Take It From Here. Columbia, MO: There, There Now, 2020. Edition of 200.
Murff, "Pastoral Counterinsurgency: Review of Tyler Mitchell's 'Ghost Images' at Gagosian Gallery," DEAR DAVE, Magazine, 2025.
Murff, "The Education of Harlan Bozeman" DEAR DAVE, Magazine, Issue No. 37, 2024.
Murff, Bengal, and Leonard, "LaToya Ruby Frazier's Steady Gaze," Magazine, MoMA, 2024.

Exhibitions as Artist

Solo Exhibitions

RACE/HUSTLE, MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts, 2025
The Devil Hiding in Plain Sight, Roger Glass Center for the Arts, University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio, 2024
We Here for Some Jive Conspiracy, Webber Gallery, Los Angeles, California, 2023
At No Point In Between, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia, 2022
American Mother, American Father, Belfast Photo Festival, Belfast, Ireland, 2022
Bold As Brass (or, Third Year Review), Baxter Street Camera Club of New York, New York, New York, 2021
At No Point In Between, Webber Gallery, London, United Kingdom, 2021
Re-Making the Mark, Gregory Allicar Museum, Fort Collins, Colorado, 2019
Corrections, Center for Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins, Colorado, 2016
Corrections, Filter Space, Chicago, Illinois, 2016

Two & Three Person Exhibitions

Fade Like a Sigh: Zora J Murff & Rana Young, Greenwood Community College, Greenwood, Massachusetts, 2024
Fade Like a Sigh: Zora J Murff & Rana Young, Spellerberg Projects, Lockheart, Texas, 2021
Talking Back: Zora J Murff & Rana Young, Brick City Galleries, Missouri State University, Springfield, Missouri, 2020
Fade Like a Sigh: Zora J Murff & Rana Young, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Nebraska, City, Nebraska, 2017

Group Exhibitions

Truth Told Slant, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, 2024
A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, 2023
Intimate Strangers, Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York, New York, 2023
LagosPhoto2023, African Artists Foundation, Lagos, Nigeria, 2023
America in Crisis, Saatchi Gallery, London, United Kingdom, 2022
Prison Nation, Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, 2022
Family Album, LACMA, Los Angeles, California, 2022
American Epidemic: Guns in the United States, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Illinois, 2021
At No Point In Between, Louis Roederer Award Exhibition, Rencontres d'Arles, Arles, France, 2021
Companion Pieces: New Photography 2020, MoMA, New York, New York, 2020

Exhibitions as Curator/Co-Curator

A Terrible Beauty: Hannah Altman, Eduardo L Rivera & Rana Young, Well Gallery, SMFA at Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts, 2024, Co-Curators: Andrew J. Bailey, Yuxuan Cai, William C. Casey, Niko Krivanek, Amy Ma, Nicol Mai, Barkat Mehra, Justin Musyimi, Matilda Peng, Karen M. Salam
Take It From Here, Abakus Projects, Boston, Massachusetts, 2024, Co-Curator: Rana Young
2023 VCP Open Juried Exhibition, Vermont Center for Photography, Brattleboro, Vermont, 2023
Points of Departure, Visible Records, Charlottesville, Virginia, 2022, Co-Curators: Jay Simple, Sydney Ellison, and Ally Caple
Collective Interventions: On Past, Present and Future Topographics, Fine Arts Gallery, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, 2021, Co-Curators: Charles Krampah (MFA 2022), Kalyn Barnoski (MFA 2021), Miki Skak (MFA 2023), Sky Maggiore (MFA 2023), Tay Butler (MFA 2022)

Collections

Victoria & Albert Museum
National Gallery of Art
Studio Museum in Harlem
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Denver Museum of Art
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Museum of Contemporary Photography