Northeast Chapter ConferenceSpeakers

Janet Pritchard

Friday, October 24, 2014 @ 1:00pm, Clark Theater

But Where's Your "Real" Camera?

Janet L. Pritchard photographs place with a special interest in the intersection of nature and culture over time. She describes her method as the pursuit of artistic vision through historical empathy. Her current creative research project, Yellowstone Dreams: An American Love Story, explores our national love affair with America's first national park through the lenses of nature, culture and history. Recently she has begun work on an innovative, collaborative mobile photography project (with Professors Dancy, DiCapua and Thorpe) on the landscape of Hadrian's Wall titled: Like a Whisper: Time on the Land. Her previous work, Dwelling: Expressions of Time, explored the layers of time found in the landscape of southern New England.

Pritchard's exhibition venues include: Fruitlands Museum, Massachusetts; International Center for Photography, New York; Martha Schneider Gallery, Chicago; Photographic Resource Center, Boston; RISD Museum of Art, Providence, RI; Sam Francis Gallery, Santa Monica, California; and the National Trust for Historic Preservation travelling exhibition America's Uncommon Places. Select publications of her work include: Fraction Magazine; View Camera Magazine; The Photo Review Magazine; Wild Apples: A Journal of Nature; New England Watershed Magazine; and Flak Photo and Lenscratch photography blogs. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including: NEH Summer Scholar Fellow, Newberry Library, Chicago, Ill.; Artist-in-Residence, Ucross Foundation, Clearmont, Wyo.; Jay and Deborah Last Fellow, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.; Fellow, University of Connecticut Humanities Institute; Artist-in-Residence, Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred; as well as Honors Faculty Fellow and Honors General Education Curriculum Development Grants, University of Connecticut.

At Uconn since 2001, Pritchard serves as the Area Coordinator for Photography and is affiliate faculty in American Studies and teaches for the Honors program. Before coming to the University of Connecticut, she taught at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and the University of Colorado Denver. Pritchard received her BA in art history and classics from the University of Colorado, and her MA and MFA from University of New Mexico. Before pursuing a career in photography, she worked as an outdoor education instructor and spent her youth travelling between the Northeast and Rocky Mountain West. She makes her home in New England but considers herself geographically bilingual.