American Figurative Photography

American Figurative Photography

Online information about American photography from sources other than Resource Library

(above: Gordon Parks, Inter-racial activities at Camp Christmas Seals, where children are aided by the Methodist camp service. Camp buddies, 1943, photograph, USDA Historical Photos. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons*)

Ancient Ink: Mark Perrott is a 2017 exhibit at the Erie Art Museum which says: "Photographer Mark Perrott has spent the past several decades documenting the ever-expanding tribe of tattooed Americans. He began his study at Island Avenue Tattoo in Pittsburgh, PA in 1979, and since then has explored tattoo parlors all across America." Also see artist's website Accessed 8/17

Behind the Door: Vanity's Demand by Milisa Taylor-Hicks is a 2017 exhibit at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts at Appalachian State University which says: "Deeply influenced by the journals and writings of Anais Nin, Milisa Taylor-Hicks creates images of fragile beauty; she embraces the idea of metaphor to weave personal narratives. Although her images are not self-portraits in the traditional sense, she collaborates with trusted models who stand in not only for the photographer but also for all woman who struggle to forge their own rules in cultures that tend to mediate emotional excess." Accessed 8/17

Dorothea Lange: Seeing People is a 2023 exhibit at the National Gallery of Art which says: "During her long, prolific, and groundbreaking career, the American photographer Dorothea Lange made some of the most iconic portraits of the 20th century. Dorothea Lange: Seeing People reframes Lange's work through the lens of portraiture, highlighting her unique ability to discover and reveal the character and resilience of those she photographed. Featuring some 100 photographs, the exhibition addresses her innovative approaches to picturing people, emphasizing her work on social issues including economic disparity, migration, poverty and racism. Accessed 11/23

Draped and Veiled: 20 x 24 Polaroid Photographs by Joyce Tenneson is a 2022 exhibit at the Asheville Art Museum which says: " Transformations features partially or fully nude figures poetically presented; Tenneson's photographs have always been interested in the magic of the human figure, contained within bodies of all ages and emotions in a broad range that are both vulnerable and bold. She interweaves elements that feel vaguely mythological or symbolic, her figures embodying Classical sculptures of gods and goddesses, both mighty and mercurial." Also see the website of the artist. Accessed 7/22

FACE VALUE: Photographs by Doris Ulmann & Andy Warhol is a 2017 exhibit at the University of Kentucky Art Museum which says: "Separated by a half century, Doris Ulmann (1882-1934) and Andy Warhol (1928-1987) had profound aesthetic and philosophical differences, yet shared surprising common ground. Face Value is a unique opportunity to see their work together, revealing distinct approaches to portraiture, constructions of identity, and conceptions of art, class, and society." Accessed 3/17

Gail Rebhan: About Time is a 2023 exhibit at the American University Museum which says: "For better and worse, nothing stays still. DC artist Gail Rebhan (b. 1953) knows that well and this, her first museum retrospective, explores her many different ways over four decades of using and reconfiguring the time-slicing medium of photography to reflect on macro-and-micro-dynamics of interactions inside families -- her own and that of other immigrants -- on the centuries of change in diverse areas of the nation's capital, and on the marks of time revealed on her body (along with periodic attempts to fight it) from young adult, to mother of two sons, then caregiver of an aging father, to the present as she continues making art and living while facing the start of her 7th decade." Accessed 6/24

Jo Ann Callis: Woman Twirling an exhibit held March 31 - August 9, 2009 at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Includes audio clips.

The Mermaid Project: Chapter 1, Confinement - works by Annaliese Tassano is a 2017 photography exhibit suggestive of underwater mermaids at the Rehoboth Art League Also see the artist's website Accessed 6/17

Kelli Connell: Pictures for Charis is a 2024 exhibit at the High Museum of Art which says: "Over the last ten years, American photographer Kelli Connell (born 1974) has researched the lives and relationship of writer Charis Wilson (American, 1914-2009) and photographer Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958). Using Wilson's writing and Weston's photographs as a guide, Connell traveled to locales where Wilson and Weston lived, made work, and spent time together. With her partner at the time, Betsy Odom (born 1980), Connell retraced the couple's explorations through the American West made some eighty years earlier to produce their landmark book California and the West (1940)." Accessed 10/24

Sharon: Photographs by Leon Borensztein is a 2017 exhibit at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art which says: "Leon Borensztein is a renowned photographer whose artwork captures the integral beauty of people in otherwise painful and challenging situations. His photographs are a glimpse into his life as a single father caring for his severely disabled daughter, Sharon, from infancy until age 29." Accessed 9/17

Spandita Malik: Meshes of Resistance is a 2024 exhibit at the Halsey Gallery, College of Charleston. Malik, a visual artist from India, exhibits photographs with applied embroidery by women in India. The Gallery says "Malik specializes in process-based work in photography, recently with photographic surface embroideries and collaborations with women in India. Malik's work in expanded documentary and social practice consciously emanates from the idea of decolonizing the eye and aesthetic surrounding documentary photography of India." The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art hosted the same exhibit in 2023. Accessed 10/24

Wildly Strange: The Photographs of Ralph Eugene Meatyard is a 2015 exhibit at the Harry Ransom Center which says: "Included are the artist's acclaimed photographs of masked figures set against a deteriorating Southern landscape, and his somewhat lesser known, yet equally dynamic portraits -- primarily of American writers." Also see article from Resource Library. Accessed 12/18

Return to online topical information about American photography

Return to Topics in American Representational Art

About Resource Library

Resource Library is a free online publication of nonprofit Traditional Fine Arts Organization (TFAO). Since 1997, Resource Library and its predecessor Resource Library Magazine have cumulatively published online 1,300+ articles and essays written by hundreds of identified authors, thousands of other texts not attributable to named authors, plus 24,000+ images, all providing educational and informational content related to American representational art. Texts and related images are provided almost exclusively by nonprofit art museum, gallery and art center sources.

All published materials provide educational and informational content to students, scholars, teachers and others. Most published materials relate to exhibitions. Materials may include whole exhibition gallery guides, brochures or catalogues or texts from them, perviously published magazine or journal articles, wall panels and object labels, audio tour scripts, play scripts, interviews, blogs, checklists and news releases, plus related images.

What you won't find:

User-tracking cookies are not installed on our website. Privacy of users is very important to us. You won't find annoying banners and pop-ups either. Our pages are loaded blazingly fast. Resource Library contains no advertising and is 100% non-commercial. .

Links to sources of information outside our website are provided only as referrals for your further consideration. Please use due diligence in judging the quality of information contained in these and all other websites. Information from linked sources may be inaccurate or out of date. We neither recommend or endorses these referenced organizations. Although we include links to other websites, we take no responsibility for the content or information contained on other sites, nor exert any editorial or other control over them. For more information on evaluating web pages see our General Resources section in Online Resources for Collectors and Students of Art History.

*Tag for expired US copyright of object image:

Search Resource Library