Catherine LeComte Lecce: Artist, Educator, and Executive Director of the Photographic Resource Center

Portrait of Catherine LeComte-Lecce

Today we have a good time and study extra about  Catherine LeComte-Lecce, Executive Director of the Photographic Resource Center (PRC) in Cambridge, MA. She can also be the co-founder and supervisor of the Burlington Micro Gallery, a cell exhibition house devoted to increasing entry to the humanities.

LeComte-Lecce has established quite a few  thrilling new initiatives at PRC, together with a six- month mentorship program pairing 4 early-career photographers with 4 established artists for sustained one-on-one mentorship. This week we will likely be that includes the Mentorship Project that includes the 2026 Mentorship Fellows are alina balseiro, Jaypix Belmer, Libby O’Neill, and Nick Ortoleva, who had been paired with mentors Jess T. Dugan, Rashod Taylor, Jillian Guyette, and Tommy Kha. Throughout this system, every fellow met usually with their mentor to develop their work, strengthen their inventive voice, and obtain steering on their skilled follow. The program culminates in an exhibition on the PRC gallery, on view September 11–October 18, 2026, that includes work developed by the fellows throughout their mentorships.

The program will even be celebrated at PRC’s fiftieth Anniversary Gala on October 17, the place all 4 mentors and 4 fellows will likely be current as honored visitors. Created as a part of PRC’s fiftieth Anniversary, this system celebrates the significance of mentorship in pictures whereas fostering significant relationships between rising and established artists and supporting the subsequent technology of photographers.

Catherine LeComte-Lecce is a nonprofit arts chief and interdisciplinary artist whose work is knowledgeable by her Puerto Rican and European heritage. She is targeted on strengthening the photographic arts by way of inclusive, community-based programming and advocacy. As Executive Director of the Photographic Resource Center, she leads exhibitions, applications, and strategic initiatives that prioritize artist help, significant partnerships, and public engagement. Catherine holds a BFA in Photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design and an MFA in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Instagram: @catherinelecomtelecce

© The 2026 Exposure Exhibition at PRC

Tell us about what began your curiosity in pictures.

My relationship with pictures began in highschool after my father handed away and I inherited his digital camera. At first, pictures turned a method for me to course of feelings I didn’t actually know put into phrases. But in a short time, I turned utterly enamored with pictures as an artwork type and knew I wished to pursue it significantly.

At the top of highschool, I acquired a small scholarship to attend Savannah College of Art and Design, the place I earned my BFA in pictures in 2014. After graduating, I took a break from academia and spent a number of years touring and dwelling overseas. Eventually, I returned to the States and pursued my MFA in pictures at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, which I accomplished in 2023.

You got here to the Photographic Resource Center first as an artist and curator, and have now stepped into the position of Executive Director. What drew you to the PRC, and what does this group imply to you personally?

My path to the PRC occurred at a extremely transitional time in my life. I completed my MFA in pictures at MassArt in 2023, had my first little one shortly afterward, after which started searching for a job the place I may keep related to pictures and the humanities. That’s what introduced me to the PRC.

I actually didn’t arrive considering I’d sometime change into Executive Director. I got here in as a program supervisor, and my position grew very organically as I turned extra concerned within the group. PRC has change into extremely private to me. I’ve grown alongside the group, constructing applications, growing relationships, supporting artists, and discovering what I’m able to as a pacesetter. I don’t consider PRC merely as a gallery. It’s a group and a useful resource for photographers at each stage of their careers, and I really feel extremely lucky to have the chance to assist form what comes subsequent.

You have curated exhibitions that deliberately amplify underrepresented voices and discover topics resembling motherhood, id, gender, and cultural heritage. How necessary is it to you that the PRC displays the variety of up to date photographic follow?

It’s extraordinarily necessary to me, and it comes naturally from who I’m and what I care about. Having Puerto Rican heritage, particularly, and rising up in a multicultural household has made me very conscious of whose tales have traditionally been centered and whose have been missed. That perspective informs each my very own art work and the artists I wish to help.

Photography is extremely broad, and our exhibitions ought to replicate that—completely different cultures, generations, identities, experiences, approaches, and phases of an artist’s profession.

Some of essentially the most significant moments for me are once we give an artist a possibility they haven’t had earlier than and so they understand that their work belongs in that house. I do know what it feels wish to need somebody to take your work significantly. I would like PRC to be a spot that does that for individuals.

What do you imagine a pictures middle wants to supply to artists right now that maybe wasn’t as vital ten or twenty years in the past?

I feel individuals are craving actual group. We spend a lot of our lives on-line now, and artists can put their work in entrance of hundreds of individuals with out ever really speaking to a different artist. Visibility isn’t essentially the identical factor as connection.

Artists want locations the place they’ll meet one another, present unfinished work, ask questions, discover mentors, study sensible abilities, and have conversations that aren’t primarily based on likes or followers.

Tell us about PHOTO / FACULTY, bringing collectively pictures educators from fourteen establishments. As somebody who has been each a pupil and trainer, what do you suppose educators contribute to the photographic group that always goes unrecognized?

PHOTO / FACULTY really got here from occupied with my very own professors in graduate college and the way a lot of themselves they gave to supporting my work. Many educators spend the educational yr utterly centered on their college students and are solely in a position to return absolutely to their very own practices throughout summer season or winter breaks. In some ways, they put their very own work on maintain to assist the subsequent technology of artists develop theirs.

I wished to show the eye again towards them and acknowledge that these educators usually are not solely lecturers, they’re working artists whose practices need to be seen and celebrated.

That feels particularly necessary proper now, as artwork establishments are closing and pictures applications and levels are being decreased or eradicated. Educators play an unlimited position in sustaining pictures as a medium. They educate the technical foundations, however additionally they problem how pictures evolves, mentor rising artists, construct communities, and go data from one technology to the subsequent.

PHOTO / FACULTY was my method of claiming: we see the work you do on your college students, however we see your work as artists, too.

Photography organizations are dealing with an advanced second. What do you see as the largest challenges dealing with pictures organizations proper now?

I feel we’re preventing to protect an artwork type that might simply change into misplaced within the digital age. We eat hundreds of photographs on our telephones, however that’s very completely different from understanding pictures as a bodily, rigorously made artwork type.

Seeing a picture on a display screen isn’t the identical as standing in entrance of a print. Following an artist on-line isn’t the identical as assembly them and listening to the story behind their work. And watching a tutorial isn’t the identical as studying in a darkroom or alongside different photographers.

That’s why locations just like the PRC matter. We’re not preventing in opposition to expertise, we’re preventing to ensure the craft, historical past, and bodily expertise of pictures aren’t misplaced due to it. We want areas the place individuals could make pictures, exhibit them, study conventional and rising processes, and go that data on to the subsequent technology.

The problem is discovering sustainable methods to supply all of that whereas preserving alternatives accessible to artists. But I feel that’s additionally what makes this second so necessary. Photography is altering, and organizations just like the PRC have a accountability to assist carry the medium ahead with out shedding what made it significant within the first place.

What would you just like the PRC to be identified for 5 years from now?

I would like us to be generally known as a spot the place photographers can discover group all through their careers, from somebody displaying work publicly for the primary time to a longtime artist who needs to present one thing again.

I would like artists to return to us for exhibitions, mentorship, schooling, skilled improvement, amenities, conversations, and easily to be round different photographers. And I would like us to be identified for taking possibilities on individuals. I would like there to be artists 5 or ten years from now who can level again to a possibility at PRC and say, “Someone there believed in my work before other people did.”

What are you enthusiastic about developing?

Right now, I’m most enthusiastic about our fiftieth Anniversary Gala on October 17. Fifty years is an unimaginable milestone, and the gala is actually about celebrating the artists, educators, members, and supporters who constructed the PRC whereas elevating the help we’d like for what comes subsequent.

We’ll be bringing collectively individuals from throughout the pictures group for an evening of artwork, dinner, particular visitors, awards, an public sale, and celebration. But extra importantly, it’s a fundraiser for PRC’s future, supporting exhibitions, mentorship, schooling, artist alternatives, and our capability to proceed rising.

PRC has an unimaginable fifty-year historical past, and this anniversary provides us a possibility to construct on that legacy and picture what the subsequent fifty years could be.

The PRC Mission