Alexandra Huddleston

Alexandra Huddleston is a photographer, book artist, publisher and pilgrim. By interweaving photography with the narrative arts, anthropology, history and religious studies, her work creates a dialogue between the life of the past and that of the present. In the course of her career, Huddleston has lived for ten months in one of the manuscripts libraries of Timbuktu and walked three of the world’s most important pilgrimages—in Spain, France and Japan—travelling over 2500 kilometers by foot. Huddleston holds a BA in studio art and East Asian studies from Stanford University and an MS in journalism from Columbia University. Among other honors, she has received a Fulbright Research Grant, and her prints have been acquired by the US Library of Congress, the National Museum of African Art and the British Library. Notably, photographs from “333 Saints” were part of the landmark exhibition “West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song” at the British Library (2015). Her most recent project “Vertigo” was honored as a 2016 Critical Mass Finalist. Huddleston is co-founder of the Kyoudai Press, with which she has published "Lost Things" (2012), "333 Saints: A Life of Scholarship in Timbuktu" (2013), "East or West: A Walking Journey Along Shikoku’s 88 Temple Pilgrimage" (2014) and "Vertigo" (2016).