Megan Pennings is an Irish/Xicana artist whose work focuses on photography around storytelling in Portrait, Documentary, Still Life, and Urban Lifestyle.

Megan is also an adjunct faculty member in Ethnic & Chican@ Studies at various community colleges.

Megan received a dual BA in Sociology with an Emphasis on Inequalities and Diversity, a BA in Mexican-American Studies, and a minor in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from California State University, Los Angeles. She received her MA in Mexican-American Studies and a graduate certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from California State University, Los Angeles.  Megan is finishing her MFA in Photography at the Academy of Art San Francisco. Megan’s work is based on her interest in social media, culture, and community and how identity and social expression are formed within photography.

Megan has been a member of Mujeres de Maíz, an LA-based womxn of color artivist collective, and has co-curated our annual live art show and exhibition. Megan is also a mentor with Las Fotos Project, an LA-based nonprofit photography mentoring program for teenage girls & gender-expansive youth.

The camera is more than just a device that captures moments, it is also a way to preserve and document moments within communities. Using a form of storytelling within photography provides a view that allows others to understand how cultures and communities are connected within our society. I became interested in photography as a way of capturing candid moments of people within their natural environment. My choice of subjects comes from my interest in social media, culture, and community, and how these aspects have become a form of expression within photography, which is the subject matter for my ongoing projects that focus on identity and social expression. Recently, I have focused on documentary portraits that capture communities based around the American subculture of bearded social clubs, that used social media platforms as a form of expression but also as a form to document and digitally archive the clubs' culture and community.