30 Years of Women: curated by Jane Jackson & Anna Walker Skillman

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Holly Andres Biography Holly Andres, a Portland-based photographer and director has made waves on the art scene for over a decade. Her portraiture is cinematic in feel and often depicts young girls in activities, haloed in childhood innocence and yet has a darker, more poignant meaning when looked at with a fixed eye. She uses photography to examine the complexities of childhood, the fleeting nature of memory, and female introspection.

Holly named her inspiration as her two older sisters for her critically acclaimed The Fallen Fawn series. They once found a suitcase full of women's items and fashions by... View artist page

Diane Arbus Biography American photographer Diane Arbus (1923-1971) did the work of subverting both social and artistic mores through her black-and-white portraits of vulnerable individuals in intensly personal moments. She frequently wandered around New York City with her camera, capturing groups and individuals who have historically occupied a space stigmatized by normative social structures. Her work exhibits a diverse range of marginalized identities, including subjects with mental illness, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and subjects embodying the essence of the middle class.

Born into a wealthy New York family in 1923, Arbus began engaging with art from a young... View artist page

Tina Barney Biography Tina Barney is an American photographer born in New York city in 1945 and is a member of the Lehman family. She is widely acclaimed for her large-scale portraits of her upper-middle-class family and friends. Today, Barney lives and works in both Westerly, Rhode Island and New York.

Barney began her artistic formation as a student at the Sun Valley Center for Arts and Humanities located in Ketchum, Idaho, where she studied between 1976 and 1979. During this time, Barney began experimenting with color and large-format photography. After returning to New York, Barney set her attention... View artist page

Jeannette Montgomery Barron Biography

Jeannette Montgomery Barron was born in Atlanta Georgia and studied at the International Center of Photography, NY, NY. She became known for her portraits of the New York art world in the 1980s, which were later published in Jeannette Montgomery Barron (Edition Bischofberger, Zurich, 1989). Her next book, Photographs and Poems (1998), a collection of her still life photographs, was a collaboration with the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jorie Graham. Mirrors (2004) includes a text by the celebrated author Edmund White. In 2006 she published Session with Keith Haring, 20 photographs taken by Jeannette Montgomery Barron in...

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Lillian Bassman Biography Lillian Bassman (1917 - 2012) was born in Brooklyn, New York, to parents she once described as “bohemian.” This fashion photographer fell in love fast with the photographs of dancer Isadora Duncan in her flowing, floating gowns, inspiring Lillian’s affinity for scarves which she attributed to Isadora’s sinuous, constantly moving fabrics.

Lillian worked as a textile designer and fashion illustrator before working at Harper’s Bazaar in 1946. In 1949, she photographed her first Paris couture collection, which led to Lillian Bassman’s distinguished career as a photographer of the era’s leading models. However, she once claimed it... View artist page

Ruth Bernhard Biography Ruth Bernhard, a German-born American photographer, began her artistic career at the Berlin Academy of Arts in 1925. After two years of studying at the Berlin Academy of Arts, Bernhard moved to New York, New York to live with her graphic designer father, Lucian Bernhard. It was there she landed a job as a darkroom assistant to Ralph Steiner, head of the photography department for Delineator magazine. While her role as the darkroom assistant to Steiner was brief, she eventually found herself making her first camera equipment purchase shortly after, beginning her journey in freelance photography.

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Carolyn Carr Biography Carolyn Carr (b. 1966) received her BFA from the Atlanta College of Art in 1992. Since, she has been actively engaged as a painter, photographer, sculptor, and installation artist. A multi-generational Southerner, Carolyn Carr's photography evolves out of her interest in understanding her complicated lineage. Carolyn Carr's photography makes standalone objects that are often arranged using the various paradigms of domestic interiors. Thus far, Carolyn Carr's photos have created a kitchen, a vestibule, a hallway, a photographer's studio, and a fictitious story, all to illustrate the challenges between cultural and personal identity.

In addition to her... View artist page

Lalla Essaydi Biography Lalla Essaydi is a Moroccan-born artist living and working in the USA. Lalla Essaydi earned her Master in Fine Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/TUFTS University in May 2003. The artist is now represented by two galleries in the United States: the Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston and the Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York City.

Lalla Essaydi’s work is deeply inspired by her Moroccan heritage and is noteworthy for its combination of Islamic calligraphy with artistic renderings of the female body. Through her work, Essaydi explores the complexities of Arab female... View artist page

Sally Gall Biography Sally Gall was born in Washington, D.C. in 1956. After attending Reed College and receiving a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1978, she settled in Houston, Texas. In 1987, Sally Gall moved to New York City. Until recently, Gall worked solely in black and white, using nature as her subject. In her most recent work, titled Elemental , Gall uses black and white and color photography to feature the enigmatic abstraction of the natural world throughout her forty-year career by presenting works from a few of her series: Water’s Edge, Subterranea, Blossoms, Heavenly... View artist page

Katy Grannan Biography

Katy Grannan is a contemporary American photographer best known for her intimate portraits of strangers. Grannan’s process and the consequent images are informed by her own childhood and the American northeast. Each photograph is imbued with secrecy, desire, and hidden intentions. “I have a terror of things being nice as knowing what to expect,” she explained. “Making a photograph is a license to have experiences that I would not otherwise have.”

Grannan was born in Arlington, Massachusetts in 1969. She received a BA from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991, and an MA from Harvard University in...

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Cig Harvey Biography

European photographer, Cig Harvey, is known for her photographs exploring the narratives deeply rooted in the natural environment and familial relationships. The slow passing of time and the natural surroundings of Cig Harvey's rural home in the Midcoast of Maine has made her alert to the magic of the mundane. Harvey’s photographs depict luscious color and luminous natural light whether it be a portrait or still lives. Her early work presented stylized and cropped self-portraits including visual metaphors and elaborate costuming. Since then, she has shifted her focus to more spontaneous photographs of her life in Maine....

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Karen Knorr Biography

Karen Knorr was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany and was raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico in the 1960s. She finished her education in Paris and London. Karen Knorr has taught, exhibited and lectured internationally, including at Tate Britain, Tate Modern, The University of Westminster, Goldsmiths, Harvard and The Art Institute of Chicago. She studied at the University of Westminster in the mid-1970s, exhibiting photography that addressed debates in cultural studies and film theory concerning the ‘politics of representation’ practices which emerged during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Karen Knorr has been the professor of...

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Mona Kuhn Biography

Mona Kuhn is a renowned photographer who was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1969. Acclaimed for her contemporary depictions of the human form, Kuhn is considered a leading photographer in the world of figurative discourse. Throughout a career spanning more than twenty years, Kuhn’s practice has focused on the mysteries of the physical and metaphysical presence of the figure. Her photographs often feature human subjects in natural environments, with a focus on the nude and its relationship to the natural world. Her photographs display a strong sense of intimacy, simplicity, and sensuality. As Kuhn solidified her...

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Sally Mann Biography

Sally Mann is an American photographer renowned for her evocative and often controversial work exploring themes of family, identity, and the American South. Her career spans several decades, and Sally Mann has consistently pushed the boundaries of conventional photography, capturing the complexities of human relationships and the landscape. Her distinctive style blends elements of documentary photography with an artistic and poetic sensibility, making her a prominent figure in contemporary photography.

 

Sally Mann was born in Lexington, Virginia, on May 1, 1951. She developed an early interest in photography and pursued her education at Hollins University, where...

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Alex Prager Biography Alex Prager is a known American art photographer and filmmaker, based in Los Angeles, California, who draws inspiration from a wide range of influences and references, including Old Hollywood aesthetics, pop culture, and street photography. Her works are elaborately staged scenes that merge past and contemporary sources to create a sense of ambiguity. Much of Prager's photographs invite those viewing her work to 'complete the story' and speculate the narrative. A set of popular series, Polyester (2007), The Big Valley (2008) , and Week-End (2009), depicts images of women expressing distress, despair, or contemplation that implants an... View artist page

Meghann Riepenhoff Biography With her unique cameraless photographs, Meghann Riepenhoff (b. 1979; Atlanta, GA) captures the ebb and flow of time, examining humans’ relationship with the environment and our impermanent place within it. Meghann Riepenhoff uses a process that entails exposing chemically treated paper to ultraviolet light, allowing her materials to organically interact with the forces of nature she manipulates. The elements that she employs in the process — waves, surface water, wind, and sediment — leave physical inscriptions through their direct contact with photographic paper. Reckoning with questions of time, impermanence, and environmentalism, the distinctive process that Meghann Riepenhoff... View artist page

Vee Speers Biography

For over two decades, Australian French artist Vee Speers has established herself in the art world with her unforgettable portraits. Her carefully choreographed images are painterly and ethereal, with a visual and metaphorical ambiguity which challenges established narratives.

Her work has been exhibited in museums, galleries, art fairs and festivals around the world, and been published in features and on covers of more than 60 international magazines, with 3 sold-out monographs of her work. Her photographs have been acquired by Sir Elton John Collection, Michael Wilson Collection, Hoffman Collection U.S. , Carter Potash Collection, Morten Viskum Collection,...

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Trine Søndergaard Biography

Trine Søndergaard (b. 1972) is a Danish photography-based visual artist. Søndergaard lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 1996 she graduated from Fatamorgana, the Danish School of Art Photography. Trine Søndergaard's work is marked by a precision and a sensibility that co-exist with an investigation of the medium of photography, its boundaries and what constitutes an image. Layered with meaning and quiet emotion, her works are highly acclaimed for their visual intensification of our perception of reality. In 2000 she was awarded the Albert Renger-Patzsch Prize and has since received numerous grants and fellowships, including a three-year...

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Angela West Biography

Angela West grew up in Dahlonega, Georgia, and received her MFA in photography from Yale University. Much of Angela West's photography is a series of varied photographic projects relating to her hometown and the chronology of its inhabitants. Employing the traditional academic genres of art to explore the nature and place of community, Photographer Angela West's projects include portrait studies of small-town teenage girls, landscape explorations of neighborhoods, and still lifes that represent the passing of time. Angela West's richly realized color photographs balance affection for her subjects with precise and unsentimental observation. Angela West's photography is...

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