Esther M. Choi is an artist, photographer, and writer with formal training in photography and architectural history/theory. Her work explores the cultural aesthetics that shape concepts of nature, with particular attention to the technologies and materiality involved in photographic image-making. Drawing on decolonial, critical environmental, and feminist STS frameworks, she investigates how representations of nature reflect and reinforce social inequalities, colonial histories, ideas about modernity and modernization, and ecological concerns. Currently, Choi focuses on the relationship between photography and the petrochemical industries, examining their environmental and cultural impacts.

Choi's work has been featured at venues including The Camera Club of New York, Texas State Galleries, Gallery 103 at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, Parisian Laundry (Montréal), and Banvard Gallery at Ohio State University. She has also contributed to exhibitions such as the Venice Architecture Biennale, Lisbon Triennial, and the Warsaw Under Construction Festival. In 2024, her photographs for T: The New York Times Style Magazine were nominated for an ASME National Magazine Award.

Choi has also led participatory projects that extend beyond traditional exhibition spaces. Her artist’s book Le Corbuffet (Prestel, 2019), a critique of the image economy framed within the structure of a cookbook, was a finalist for the James Beard Foundation Photography Award. In 2020, she launched Office Hours, a participatory knowledge-sharing initiative focused on addressing the historical underrepresentation of BIPOC practitioners in the cultural industries. The project later evolved into Public Service, a Ford Foundation-supported YouTube series dedicated to fostering social change within these fields.

Choi's essays have appeared in publications such as E-flux, Artforum, Art Papers, Perspecta, Architectural Record, The Journal of Architectural Education, and Harvard Design Magazine. She co-edited Architecture at the Edge of Everything Else (MIT Press, 2010) and Architecture Is All Over (Columbia Books, 2017), and contributed to the edited volumes Hippie Modernism (Walker Art Center, 2015), Radical Pedagogies (MIT Press, 2021), and Reaper: Richard Hamilton, Sigfried Giedion (JRP Ringier, 2017).

Choi's work has been supported by institutions such as the Ford Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, Getty Foundation/ American Council of Learned Societies, Graham Foundation, Society of Architectural Historians, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Her projects have been featured and reviewed in T: The New York Times Style Magazine, 032C, Los Angeles Times, The Globe and Mail, Architect's Newspaper, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Architectural Digest, Elephant, and more.

A 2022 Getty/ ACLS Postdoctoral Fellow, Choi has taught at OCAD University, The Cooper Union, and other institutions. She holds a joint PhD in Architectural History/ Theory and Interdisciplinary Humanities from Princeton University, as well as degrees in photography and architectural history/ theory from Harvard Graduate School of Design, Concordia University, and Toronto Metropolitan University. She currently resides and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Email: studio at estherchoi dot net

Commercial and editorial commissions: Visual Studies