Lori Ordover is a lens-based artist whose work explores memory, loss, and the search for equilibrium between the body and place. Through photography, self-portraiture, reflection, duration, and the family archive, she investigates what it means to find a sense of home, both physically and emotionally.
Something magical happens to me when I look at the world through a lens. It helps me notice nuances of emotion, beauty, and tension I wouldn’t otherwise see.
At first, I was obsessed with equipment. My father was an inventor, and the idea that an object was the solution had me focused on what was in my hands. The thing about technology is that the better you are with it, the more invisible it becomes. Eventually, it was just me and what I was seeing.
It became clear to me that my father didn't influence me alone; my mother did, too. She was deaf and never learned sign language; she read lips. She was remarkable in the way she made her disability invisible, but there were consequences to that invisibility. She could not hear the intricacies of her surroundings. She did not hear my pain, my joy, or the thousands of emotions that exist between those extremes.
Photography became my way of reclaiming those nuances, to search for the sensitivities that can so easily go unnoticed and bring them into view.
My work has increasingly become an exploration of home as more than a physical place. I am interested in what happens when the places we associate with belonging disappear, and how memory, landscape, the body, and identity can become vessels for reconstructing a sense of home. Through making photographs, I am searching for a place where the body can settle.
Ordover was born in Jamaica, Queens, and grew up in New York City. After a successful career in marketing, she turned to photography to pursue her creative practice. She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Sarah Lawrence College and studied photography at the International Center of Photography in New York, the Los Angeles Center of Photography, Santa Fe Workshops, and the Vermont Center for Photography. In 2026, she received her MFA in Photography from Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford.
Her work has been recognized as a Critical Mass 2021 finalist and has received recognition from the International Fine Art Photography Awards, the International Photography Awards, the New York Center for Photographic Art, and South x Southeast Magazine.
Her work has been exhibited at the Danforth Art Museum, Oceanside Museum of Art, Brand Library & Art Center, Dallas Center for Photography, Vermont Center for Photography, International Center of Photography, Los Angeles Center of Photography, New York Center for Photographic Art, (Le) Poisson Rouge Gallery, Umbrella Arts Gallery, Handwright Gallery, and South x Southeast Gallery.
As a member of the Memory As A Verb Collective, her work has been exhibited at the Vermont Center of Photography, Danforth Art Museum, Oceanside Museum of Art, Brand Library & Art Center, and Dallas Center for Photography.
Ordover is the author of the artist’s books Silence Is and Still. Silence Is draws from her experience growing up with a deaf mother and explores communication, invisibility, and the emotional spaces between people. Still continues her investigation of memory, place, and the search for home.
Ordover serves on the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Center of Photography and Penumbra Foundation. She is also a member of the Photography Committee at The Museum of Modern Art and the Collections Committee at the International Center of Photography.