Lois Conner | |
---|---|
Born | 1951 (age 72–73) |
Nationality | American |
Education | BFA photography, Pratt Institute, 1975 MFA photography, Yale University, 1981 |
Known for | platinum print landscapes |
Awards | John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Grants, 1984 and 1985 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Anonymous Was a Woman Fellowship |
Website | loisconner |
Lois Conner (born 1951) is an American photographer. She is noted particularly for her platinum print landscapes that she produces with a 7" x 17" format banquet camera.
Conner was born in New York City in 1951[1] and grew up in southern Pennsylvania.[2] She dedicated herself to the arts from a young age: learning about photography from her father at 9 years old,[3] apprenticing with a painter as a teenager, and later studying fashion design and taking dance, art, and photography classes in New York City.[2] Conner credits Philippe Halsman, her photography teacher at The New School, for her ultimately choosing to study photography.[2]
Lois Conner received her BFA in photography from the Pratt Institute.[4] At Yale University, where she received her MFA in 1981,[4] she met and studied with Tod Papageorge and Richard Benson.[5] She moved to New York City in 1971 where she worked for the United Nations until 1984.[6][2]
The Sackler Gallery in Washington (National Museum of Art) presented a retrospective of her work, Landscape as Culture, in 1994.[4] Among her other exhibitions were solo shows Asie-la ligne du paysage (1997) in Lausanne, Switzerland, The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith (2005) and Twirling the Lotus: Photographs of China and Tibet (2007) in London, Beijing: Unfurling the Landscape (2014) at Australian National University, and A Long View at the Shanghai Center of Photography (2018).[4][3] Recent work has included a series of portraits of pregnant women.[6]
Upcoming publications include: American Trees (Yale University Art Gallery) and Beijing Spectacle-Ruination and Reinvention.[8]
Conner's work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian American Art Museum,[1] the Australian National Gallery in Canberra, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the British Library.[8]
Conner was awarded John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation grants in 1984 and 1985, which enabled her to photograph in China.[1][9][2] She was also the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship[6] and the Anonymous Was a Woman fellowship.[6]