Summer Wagner is a fine art photographer and film director based in Los Angeles, originally from the American Midwest's Rust Belt. A 2026 Hasselblad Masters Finalist, she builds narrative, dreamlike worlds rooted in the seemingly mundane landscapes of the United States. Her folkloric work shapes a modern American myth, transforming everyday objects — a kitchen, a field, a bottle of cough syrup — into symbols of the contemporary psyche.

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The Pulse of Grass and Screen, her second solo exhibition with The Locker Room Gallery, Tribeca, New York, opens July 9, 2026. The show follows the 2024 debut of Midamerican Fever Dream, a transmedia narrative of stills, text, sound, and film tracing a single Rust Belt family. Wagner's work has been exhibited at Art Basel Miami, Paris Photo, auctioned at Christie's New York, and is held in the permanent collection of the Arab Bank of Switzerland and the Rockford Art Museum. Wagner’s first book is also set to release in October of this year (2026) with Setanta Books.​​​