Abbey Hepner is an American artist whose work examines the politics of place, technology, health, and environmental memory. Working across photography, installation, moving image, and sculpture, she brings historical and experimental photographic processes into dialogue with contemporary technologies. Her research-driven practice combines archival inquiry, material experimentation, and community collaboration to explore how landscapes and bodies become sites of extraction, evidence, and memory.

Based in the Midwest, Hepner maintains deep ties to Western Colorado. As a third-generation downwinder, she has a longstanding engagement with the legacies of the nuclear industry, uranium extraction, and the communities and landscapes shaped by them. Her work considers how these histories persist across generations and become inscribed in bodies, technologies, archives, and the land. Questions of health, access, and disability also inform her practice and advocacy.

In 2026, Hepner’s work was exhibited at Lucie Gallery in Greece; the Maier Museum in Virginia; and Via Crispi Art Space in Italy, and she was selected for the 10th Singapore International Photography Festival in Singapore. She was also named a Shortlisted Finalist for the 2026 Sony World Photography Awards, with work exhibited at Somerset House in London, UK, and Tokyo Photographic Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan, and an Exhibiting Finalist in the Royal Photographic Society’s International Photography Exhibition 167 at Saatchi Gallery in London, UK. Previous exhibitions include SITE Santa Fe; Mt. Rokko International Photography Festival in Japan; Krannert Art Museum; Noorderlicht Photo Festival in the Netherlands; University of Notre Dame; and Lianzhou Foto Festival in China. Hepner received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in 2022 and has been an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Alberta, Canada.

Her work has been featured in The Guardian, The Observer, Hyperallergic, Ars Technica, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Lenscratch, and Artillery Magazine. Her monograph, The Light at the End of History, which examines nuclear technologies and their environmental and social consequences, was published by Daylight Books in 2021.

Hepner holds an MFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico and undergraduate degrees in Art and Psychology from the University of Utah. She is an Associate Professor of Art and Area Head of Photography and Digital Media at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.