Debi Cornwall is a visual artist working in conceptual documentary photography, who returned to creative expression in 2014 after a 12-year career as a wrongful conviction lawyer. Her values as an advocate and trained mediator, as well as her background representing innocent DNA exonerees, inform her visual work. Her series marry empathy and dark humor with structural critique.

She trained in photography at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) while completing a Bachelor’s degree in Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. After working for photographers Mary Ellen Mark and Sylvia Plachy, as an AP stringer, and as an investigator for the federal public defender’s office, she attended Harvard Law School and practiced for more than a decade as a civil rights attorney.