Susan Lipper

Lipper was born and raised in New York City. She studied English Romantic poetry in college with a concentration on W. B. Yeats.She received an MFA in photography from Yale School of Art in 1983.{{cite web|access-date=2023-04-10|title=Susan Lipper|url=https://www.susanlipper.com/about.html|website=www.susanlipper.com}}

Lipper uses a medium format camera, sometimes with attached flash.Susan Harris-Edwards, "[http://susanlipper.com/text_gv_edwards.html Grapevine: Photographs by Susan Lipper]". History of Photography, Vol. 19, no. 2 (1995) 180–81. Accessed 26 March 2018.Susan Lipper, "[https://vimeo.com/70585392 ICP Lecture Series 2010: Susan Lipper Grapevine: Photographs by Susan Lipper]". International Center of Photography. Accessed 26 March 2018.

Her first book, Innocence & the Birth of Jealousy (1974), combines photography and poetry. According to David Solo writing in The PhotoBook Review, the book "offers a single, tightly integrated meditation on narcissism and its effects on relationships." Lipper appears in a set of dance-like poses, photographed by Penny Slinger, while Lipper was studying English literature in London. "When Lipper reviewed the contact sheets, the idea of the sequence/story emerged, and she wrote the accompanying narrative poem". The book was published by Martin Booth under his Omphalos imprint.{{cite journal |last1= Solo |first1= David|date= |title= Innocence & the Birth of Jealousy: David Solo on Susan Lipper|url= https://aperture.org/tag/the-photobook-review-016/ |journal= The PhotoBook Review |volume= |issue= 16 |pages=13 |doi=|publisher=Aperture}}

After returning to the United States, Lipper developed her more recognized style, as seen in the book trilogy Grapevine (1994), Trip (2004), and Domesticated Land (2018).

For about 20 years she has been visiting and photographing a tiny community in Grapevine Hollow in the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia, eastern United States.{{cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/exhibitions-if-you-go-down-to-the-woods-today-susan-lippers-sympathetic-photographs-show-a-society-1392393.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220525/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/exhibitions-if-you-go-down-to-the-woods-today-susan-lippers-sympathetic-photographs-show-a-society-1392393.html |archive-date=2022-05-25 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|date= 6 February 1994 |accessdate= 25 March 2018|first=Tim|last=Hilton|publisher=The Independent|title=Exhibitions / If you go down to the woods today: Susan Lipper's sympathetic photographs show a society in decline. Candida Hofer's go even further, taking the people out altogether}} The photographs she made there between 1988 and 1994, in collaboration with her subjects the residents, became Grapevine. The critic Gerry Badger has written that "Community, family, and gender relationships seem to be at the core of her investigation." Lipper's collaborative approach distinguishes Grapevine from social documentary photography; she describes it as "subjective documentary" and that "we were creating fictional images together [. . .] they knew the narratives I was playing around with as well as I did." Izabela Radwanska Zhang wrote in the British Journal of Photography that it "challenges our belief in images labelled 'photojournalism', by interweaving a theatrical element. Lipper asked her models to assume characters that could essentially be them in the images; the result is a slippery, mysterious work."{{cite web|accessdate=2021-04-19|title=Festival: Krakow Photomonth|url=https://www.1854.photography/2017/05/festival-krakow-photomonth/|website=British Journal of Photography}} Parr and Badger include Grapevine in the third volume of The Photobook: A History.{{cite book | last1= Parr|first1= Martin | last2=Badger|first2= Gerry | title= The Photobook: A History Volume III | year= 2014 | location= London | publisher= Phaidon | isbn= 9780714866772 | page=229}}

Trip, made between 1993 and 1999, paired road trip photographs of urban landscapes and interiors with writing by Frederick Barthelme.{{cite book|title=Domesticated Land by Susan Lipper|url=http://www.mackbooks.co.uk/books/1219-Domesticated-Land.html}}{{cite web|access-date=2023-04-10|title=Susan Lipper|url=https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/art/susan-lipper-2|website=The New Yorker}} Domesticated Land was made between 2012 and 2016 in the California desert.

• Innocence & the Birth of Jealousy. Rushden, UK: Omphalos, 1974.
• Grapevine: Photographs by Susan Lipper. Manchester, UK: Cornerhouse, 1994. {{ISBN|0-948797-13-4}}.
• New York: powerHouse, 1997. {{ISBN|1576870235}}.
• Trip. Photographs by Lipper with accompanying short texts by Frederick Barthelme. With an afterword by Matthew Drutt.
• Stockport, UK: Dewi Lewis, 2000. {{ISBN|1-899235-52-3}}.
• Brooklyn, New York: powerHouse, 2000. {{ISBN|1576870510}}.
• Bed and Breakfast. Country life 4. Maidstone, UK: Photoworks, 2000. {{ISBN|9780951742730}}. Edited by Val Williams. With an essay by David Chandler. Edition of 1000 copies.
• Domesticated Land. London: Mack, 2018. {{ISBN|9781912339037}}.

• Who's Looking at the Family?. Manchester, UK: Cornerhouse, 1994. Edited by Val Williams. {{ISBN|978-0946372324}}.
• How We Are: Photographing Britain from the 1840s to the Present. Edited by Val Williams and Susan Bright. London: Tate, 2007. {{ISBN|978-1-85437-714-2}}.

• Grapevine Hollow, The Photographers' Gallery, London, 1994
• Grapevine, Arnolfini, Bristol, UK, 1994{{Cite web |title=Susan Lipper 'Grapevine' |url=https://archives.bristol.gov.uk/records/43371/Dept/Mk/2/34/6 |access-date=2024-09-19 |website=Bristol Archives online catalogue |language=en-gb}}{{Cite web |title=Michael Platt & Susan Lipper |url=https://arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/michael-platt-susan-lipper/ |access-date=2024-05-10 |website=Arnolfini |language=en-GB}}
• Grapevine: Photographs by Susan Lipper, Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK, 1995{{Cite web |date=1995-01-20 |title=Grapevine: Photographs by Susan Lipper |url=https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/19-january-1995/grapevine-photographs-by-susan-lipper/ |access-date=2024-10-13 |website=Design Week |language=en-US}}

• Who's Looking at the Family, Barbican Centre, London, May–September 1994{{Cite web |date=1994-05-28 |title=Exhibitions/ Mann's family and other animals: All human life isn't |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/exhibitions-mann-s-family-and-other-animals-all-human-life-isn-t-there-in-the-barbican-gallery-s-dark-new-show-of-family-photography-1439352.html |access-date=2024-05-05 |website=The Independent |language=en}}

• 2015: Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

Lipper's work is held in the following permanent collections:

• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City: 2 prints (as of 11 April 2023)
• Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota: 1 print (as of 30 August 2021)
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles: 5 prints (as of 11 April 2023)
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: 2 prints (as of 7 October 2024)
• National Portrait Gallery, London: 4 prints
• New York Public Library, New York City
• Victoria and Albert Museum, London: 7 prints (as of 30 August 2021)

{{Reflist}}

• {{Official website|www.susanlipper.com}}
• [https://vimeo.com/70585392 "ICP Lecture Series 2010: Susan Lipper"] (video) – Lipper describes her career

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