Lois Conner
{{short description|American photographer|bot=PearBOT 5}}
{{Infobox artist
| honorific_prefix =
| name = Lois Conner
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| birth_date = {{birth year and age|1951}}
| birth_place = New York City
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| nationality = American
| education = BFA photography, Pratt Institute, 1975
MFA photography, Yale University, 1981
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| known_for = platinum print landscapes
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| awards = John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Grants, 1984 and 1985
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
Anonymous Was a Woman Fellowship
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| website = {{URL|loisconner.net}}
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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.
Early life
Conner was born in New York City in 1951{{cite web |title=Lois Conner {{!}} Smithsonian American Art Museum |url=https://americanart.si.edu/artist/lois-conner-970 |website=americanart.si.edu}} and grew up in southern Pennsylvania. She dedicated herself to the arts from a young age: learning about photography from her father at 9 years old,{{cite news |last1=Xiaolin |first1=Liu |title=US photographer can't get enough of China |url=https://www.shine.cn/feature/art-culture/1804153099/ |access-date=27 March 2021 |work=SHINE |date=April 15, 2018 |language=en}} apprenticing with a painter as a teenager, and later studying fashion design and taking dance, art, and photography classes in New York City. Conner credits Philippe Halsman, her photography teacher at The New School, for her ultimately choosing to study photography.
Education
Lois Conner received her BFA in photography from the Pratt Institute. At Yale University, where she received her MFA in 1981, she met and studied with Tod Papageorge and Richard Benson.{{cite news |last1=Yin |first1=Sharon |title=Art professor Papageorge to receive Lucie Award for photography |url=https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2012/10/04/art-professor-papageorge-to-receive-lucie-award-for-photography/ |access-date=27 March 2021 |work=yaledailynews.com |publisher=Yale |date=October 4, 2012 |language=en}} She moved to New York City in 1971 where she worked for the United Nations until 1984.
Exhibitions
The Sackler Gallery in Washington (National Museum of Art) presented a retrospective of her work, Landscape as Culture, in 1994.{{cite web |title=Info |url=http://www.loisconner.net/info |website=Lois Conner |access-date=27 March 2021}} 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). Recent work has included a series of portraits of pregnant women.
Publications
=Books of work by Conner=
- China, The Photographs of Lois Conner. Callaway Arts & Entertainment, 2000. {{ISBN|978-0935112573}}.{{cite web |title=Publications |url=http://www.loisconner.net/publications |website=Lois Conner |access-date=13 July 2021}}
- Lois Conner Photographs. 2003.
- Twirling the Lotus. 2007.
- Life In A Box. 2011.
- Beijing Building. London. Rossi & Rossi, 2011. {{ISBN|978-1906576219}}.
- Beijing: Contemporary and Imperial. Princeton Architectural Press, 2014. {{ISBN|978-1616892487}}.
- LOST, Beijing. Kris Graves Projects, 2018.
- Lotus Leaves. New Zealand. Wairarpa Academy Occasional Publication No. 1, 2018. {{ISBN|9780935112573}}.
Upcoming publications include: American Trees (Yale University Art Gallery) and Beijing Spectacle-Ruination and Reinvention.{{cite book |last1=Hunter |first1=Fredericka |last2=Glennie |first2=Ian |title=The Wide Open: Prose, Poetry, and Photographs of the Prairie |date=January 2008 |publisher=U of Nebraska Press |isbn=978-0-8032-1871-0 |page=197 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8-h7ZWwDFu4C&q=%22Beijing+Spectacle-Ruination+and+Reinvention%22&pg=PA197 |access-date=27 March 2021 |language=en}}
Collections
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, the Australian National Gallery in Canberra, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the British Library.
Awards
Conner was awarded John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation grants in 1984 and 1985, which enabled her to photograph in China.{{cite web |title=Lois Conner |url=https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/lois-conner/ |website=John Simon Guggenheim Foundation |access-date=27 March 2021}}{{cite news |last1=Silverman |first1=Rena |title=A Life Collecting Chinese Landscapes |url=https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/21/a-life-collecting-chinese-landscapes/ |access-date=27 March 2021 |work=Lens Blog |publisher=New York Times |date=21 May 2014}} She was also the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship{{cite web |title=Poynter Fellowship: Lois Conner |url=https://communications.yale.edu/poynter/lois-conner |website=Yale Office of Public Affairs & Communications |access-date=27 March 2021 |language=en |date=3 December 2018}} and the Anonymous Was a Woman fellowship.
Bibliography
- Beijing: Contemporary and Imperial (2014), Princeton Architectural Press, {{ISBN|978-1-616-89248-7}}
References
{{reflist}}
- Davis, Keith F. 'Wanderlust: Work by Eight Contemporary Photographers from the Hallmark Photographic Collection' (Kansas City: Hallmark, 1987), 81.
- Feinberg, Jean E. 'Wave Hill Pictured: Celebration of a Garden' (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991), 17-21.
- [http://www.princeton.edu/~visarts/Faculty/LoisConner/LoisConner.html Princeton University; The Program in Visual Arts; Faculty, s.v. "Lois Conner"]. Accessed 23 November 2007.
- [http://www.getty.edu/vow/ULANFullDisplay?find=%13%11conner&role=&nation=&prev_page=1&subjectid=500037134 Union List of Artist Names, s.v. "Conner, Lois"]. Accessed 10 September 2006.
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Category:Yale School of Art alumni
Category:Pratt Institute alumni
Category:Photographers from New York City
Category:Sarah Lawrence College faculty
Category:American women photographers
Category:National Endowment for the Arts Fellows