Deborah Bright

Last updated
Deborah Bright
Born1950 (age 73–74)
Education University of Chicago, MFA, 1975
Occupation(s) Fine-art photographer, Professor
Website www.deborahbright.net

Deborah Bright (born 1950) is a 20th-century American photographer and artist, writer, and educator. She is particularly noted for her imagery and scholarship on queer desire and politics, as well as on the ideologies of American landscape photography. [1] Her work is in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Fogg Art Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. [2] [3] Bright's photographic projects have been exhibited internationally.

Contents

Life and career

Bright grew up in Washington, D.C. She received her M.F.A. from the University of Chicago in 1975.

Bright joined the faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1989 with a joint appointment in History of Art and Visual Culture (HAVC) and Photography. She also served RISD in many other capacities, from department head to stepping in as Acting Dean of Fine Arts, until 2012 when Bright left RISD to become chair of Fine Arts at the Pratt Institute. [4] Since her retirement from Pratt, Bright lives in Brooklyn, NY and has resumed painting queer abstractions.

Artistic works

Bright is notable for her writing and photographic bodies of work on LGBT, queer, and women's right subject matter, as well as for her writing about and work of landscape photography.

Gender and sexuality

Dream Girls (1989–1990)

Bright first gained renown for her series called Dream Girls (1989–90), which challenged mainstream, heteronormative gender-sex identities propagated in Hollywood movies. [5] Inspired by her adolescent fantasies, Bright recreated iconic Hollywood movie scenes of the 20th century, inserting herself into film stills from the 1940s and 50s. [6] She appears in place of such iconic romantic male leads as Spencer Tracy and Rock Hudson opposite their female counterparts, including Katharine Hepburn, in a fulfillment of lesbian desire that thematizes gender and LGBTQ+ subject matter. [7]

Being and Riding (1996–1999)

While working on Dream Girls, Bright also worked on a similarly themed photographic series called Being and Riding (1996–1999), which focuses on a common female childhood obsession with horses. The series featured provocatively framed plastic toy horses and female figures. [8]

In 2008, Bright collaborated with other artists in an exhibition called Pink and Bent: Art of Queer Women. The exhibition took place at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art on May 21-June 28, 2008 and was curated by Pilar Gallego and Cora Lambert. [9]

In the wake of the 2016 Presidential election of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, Bright participated in the Nasty Women project (2017) along with other female artists. The exhibition took place at The Knockdown Center in Maspeth, Queens, New York [10]

Non-photographic works

Between 2015 and 2017 after her retirement from Pratt, Bright began creating a series of works using colored pencil and graphite on Bristol board. The five works, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Bad Moon Rising, My Egypt, Funkflash, and Night Radio, all work together to defy traditional gender norms. [11]

Landscape photography

Battlefield Panoramas (1981–1984)

Bright's 1983 work, Bloody Lane, The Battle of Antietam , was displayed at the Smithsonian in 1992. Bloody Lane consists of six 13x19 inch selenium toned silver prints, which are part of her Battlefield Panoramas series. [12] The work was also displayed at the Siskind Center from September 1993 – January 1994.

Crow Agency: Battle of the Little Big Horn is part of her Battlefield Panoramas series (1981–84), which references the nineteenth-century panorama photography tradition of Edweard Muybridge and William Henry Jackson. This color photography series represents a bodily immersion view of the battlefield from the perspective of those on the ground fighting rather than from the traditional landscape perspective from on high. The views are dominated by the tall grasses and draws of the Montana landscape. [13]

All That Is Solid

Her installation piece All that is Solid was displayed from 1992 to 2001 in five cities throughout the United States. She installed each piece based on their location; Bright wanted the work to reflect the area's de-industrialization in addition to former industrial areas through the local details. [14]

Manifest Series

In Bright's Manifest series the artist explores agricultural enclosures and family heritage in New England symbolized by the omnipresent stone walls, and focuses on self definition and political enfranchisement centered on individual male property ownership. Her work was made around the same time as her All that is Solid piece in 2000–01. [15]

Glacial Erratic (2000–2003)

From 2000 to 2003, Bright created Glacial Erratic , which consists of nine photographs of Plymouth Rock at different tides and times of day, akin to Claude Monet's series of Cathedral and Haystacks 19th-century Impressionist paintings. For this body of work, Bright photographed the rock in tight framing that reveals the iconic rock's containment within a metal fence and secured as a tourist site. The rock's difference from the surrounding geological landscape reveals its displacement. [15]

Publications

Edited books

Articles and scholarship authored

Awards

Collections

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Duane Michals</span> American photographer

Duane Michals is an American photographer. Michals's work makes innovative use of photo-sequences, often incorporating text to examine emotion and philosophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tammy Rae Carland</span> American photographer, writer and filmmaker

Tammy Rae Carland, is a photographer, video artist, zine editor, current provost at California College of the Arts (CCA), and former co-owner of the independent lesbian music label Mr. Lady Records and Videos. Her work has been published, screened, and exhibited around the world in galleries and museums in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berlin, and Sydney.

Linda Connor is an American photographer living in San Francisco, California. She is known for her landscape photography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art</span> Visual art museum in New York City, US

The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (LLMA), formerly the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, is a visual art museum in SoHo, Lower Manhattan, New York City. It mainly collects, preserves and exhibits visual arts created by LGBTQ artists or art about LGBTQ+ themes, issues, and people. The museum, operated by the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation, offers exhibitions year-round in numerous locations and owns more than 22,000 objects, including, paintings, drawings, photography, prints and sculpture. The foundation was awarded Museum status by the New York State Board of Regents in 2011 and was formally accredited as a museum in 2016. The museum is a member of the American Alliance of Museums and operates pursuant to their guidelines. As of 2019, the LLMA was the only museum in the world dedicated to artwork documenting the LGBTQ experience.

Joan E. Biren or JEB is an American feminist photographer and film-maker, who dramatizes the lives of LGBT people in contexts that range from healthcare and hurricane relief to Womyn’s Music and anti-racism. For portraits, she encourages sitters to act as her “muse”, rather than her “subject”. Biren was a member of The Furies Collective, a short-lived but influential lesbian commune.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chitra Ganesh</span>

Chitra Ganesh is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Ganesh's work across media includes: charcoal drawings, digital collages, films, web projects, photographs, and wall murals. Ganesh draws from mythology, literature, and popular culture to reveal feminist and queer narratives from the past and to imagine new visions of the future.

Nathan Lyons was an American photographer, curator, and educator. He exhibited his photographs from 1956 onwards, produced books of his own and edited those of others.

Del LaGrace Volcano is an American artist, performer, and activist from California. A formally trained photographer, Volcano's work includes installation, performance and film and interrogates the performance of gender on several levels, especially the performance of masculinity and femininity.

Stephen DiRado is an American photographer. His work is mostly black-and-white, and he makes frequent use of large-format cameras. He is most noted for his portraiture, night-astronomical photography, and semi-composed group photography, and for the extensive length of his projects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zanele Muholi</span> South African artist and visual activist (born 1972)

Zanele Muholi is a South African artist and visual activist working in photography, video, and installation. Muholi's work focuses on race, gender and sexuality with a body of work that dates back to the early 2000s, documenting and celebrating the lives of South Africa's Black lesbian, gay, transgender, and intersex communities. Muholi is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, explaining that "I'm just human".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jessica Yatrofsky</span> American artist

Jessica Yatrofsky is an American artist, a photographer and a filmmaker living in Brooklyn, New York.

Harmony Hammond is an American artist, activist, curator, and writer. She was a prominent figure in the founding of the feminist art movement in 1970s New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laura Aguilar</span> American photographer (1959–2018)

Laura Aguilar was an American photographer. She was born with auditory dyslexia and attributed her start in photography to her brother, who showed her how to develop in dark rooms. She was mostly self-taught, although she took some photography courses at East Los Angeles College, where her second solo exhibition, Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell, was held. Aguilar used visual art to bring forth marginalized identities, especially within the LA Queer scene and Latinx communities. Before the term Intersectionality was used commonly, Aguilar captured the largely invisible identities of large bodied, queer, working-class, brown people in the form of portraits. Often using her naked body as a subject, she used photography to empower herself and her inner struggles to reclaim her own identity as "Laura" – a lesbian, fat, disabled, and brown person. Although work on Chicana/os is limited, Aguilar has become an essential figure in Chicano art history and is often regarded as an early "pioneer of intersectional feminism" for her outright and uncensored work. Some of her most well-known works are Three Eagles Flying, The Plush Pony Series, and Nature Self Portraits. Aguilar has been noted for her collaboration with cultural scholars such as Yvonne Yarbo-Berjano and receiving inspiration from other artists like Judy Dater. She was well known for her portraits, mostly of herself, and also focused upon people in marginalized communities, including LGBT and Latino subjects, self-love, and social stigma of obesity.

TT Takemoto is an American artist and associate professor of visual studies and dean of Humanities & Sciences at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Takemoto's work explores issues of race and queer identity. They have presented work internationally, and received numerous grants for their work, notably from ART Matters, the James Irvine Foundation and the San Francisco Arts Commission. Their film Looking for Jiro received Best Experimental Film Jury Award at the Austin LGBT International Film Festival, and opened MIX 24: New York’s Queer Experimental Film Festival.

Deborah Springstead Ford is an American photographer noted for her fine art black and white combination printed photographs exploring ambiguous perceptual realities. She has photographed her family, western landscapes and cultural artifacts, with much of her photographic work drawing on the relationships between science and art, the natural world and cultural geography. Most recently her photographs of oil and gas exploration in the Powder River Basin and the high desert west have received attention and been published in Arid. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibits in museums and galleries around the continent, and is included in many private and public collections such as the Center for Creative Photography, California Museum of Photography, and Northlight Gallery. She has been an arts advocate, educator and program administrator in addition to being a professional visual artist for over 30 years. Ford attended Minneapolis College of Art & Design, Arizona State University and Goddard College. She has a BFA in Photography, a Master's in Art Education/Photographic Studies and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts. She was a professor of Photographic Studies at Prescott College. She taught photography full-time from 1982 to 2013, the last 18 years at Prescott College in northern Arizona. As an arts advocate, Ford was instrumental in the creation of the Prescott College Art Gallery. The gallery and Ford have both been nominated for Arizona Governor's Art Awards. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, including four Arizona Commission on the Arts Grants and participated in many Artist-in-Residence programs around the country including the Biosphere 2, Ucross Foundation, Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Arts, Sitka Center for Art & Ecology, Joshua Tree National Park, Isle Royale National Park, and Aspen Guard Station. Ford's photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Recent publications include a profile in Black and White Magazine, Issue #82. and photographs in Orion magazine. Ford was the executive director of Playa, in Summer Lake Oregon, a residency program for visual artists, scientists, writers and others engaged with creative inquiry from 2013 to 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kei Ito</span> Japanese photographer and installation artist

Kei Ito is a Japanese visual artist working primarily with installation art and experimental photography currently based in the United States. He is most known for his Sungazing,Afterimage Requiem, and Burning Away series.

Lola Flash is an American photographer whose work has often focused on social, LGBT and feminist issues. An active participant in ACT UP during the time of the AIDS epidemic in New York City, Flash was notably featured in the 1989 "Kissing Doesn't Kill" poster.

Brittany Nelson is an American artist. She works in the medium of camera-less photography.

Rachel Farmer is an American artist. She is primarily known for her ceramic sculpture and installations. Farmer's work explores Mormon history from a feminist and queer perspective, and is informed by her roots in the Utah area.

Shari Diamond is a queer American feminist artist and educator. Diamond uses they/them gender pronouns. Diamond was born in Miami Beach, Florida and earned an M.A. in Photography from New York University / International Center of Photography. They currently live in Newburgh, New York.

References

  1. ↑ Dennis, Kelly (2015). "Eclipsing Aestheticism: Western Landscape Photography After Ansel Adams". Miranda: Revue pluridisciplinaire du monde anglophone. 11 (11): 18–22. doi: 10.4000/miranda.6920 .
  2. 1 2 "Conveyed to Ebenezer Goodrich by Deed of Elisha Hervey, 1799 | RISD Museum". risdmuseum.org.
  3. 1 2 "From the Harvard Art Museums' collections Untitled (Adam's Rib, 1949) from "Dream Girls"". www.harvardartmuseums.org.
  4. 1 2 "Deborah Bright is Pratt's new Chair of the Fine Arts – RISD Academic Affairs". June 2012.
  5. ↑ 1996, Marsha Meskimmon, "The Art of Reflection: Women's Artists' Self-portraiture in the Twentieth Century, "Columbia University Press."
  6. ↑ Fraser, Jean; Boffin, Tessa (1991). "Tantalizing Glimpses of Stolen Glances: Lesbians Take Photographs". Feminist Review (38): 20–32. doi:10.2307/1395375. JSTOR   1395375.
  7. ↑ White, Patricia (1999). Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. p. 43. ISBN   978-0-253-33641-5.
  8. ↑ "Museum of Contemporary Photography". www.mocp.org. Retrieved 2019-03-26.
  9. ↑ "PINK & BENT: Art of Queer Women". Leslie-Lohman Museum. 2008-05-21. Archived from the original on 2019-03-26. Retrieved 2019-03-26.
  10. ↑ "NASTY WOMEN Exhibition". The Knockdown Center. Retrieved 2019-03-26.
  11. ↑ "Deborah Bright". Brooklyn Arts Council. Archived from the original on 2019-03-27. Retrieved 2019-03-26.
  12. ↑ "Bloody Lane: Battle of Antietam, from the series, Battlefield Panoramas". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved 2019-03-26.
  13. ↑ Dennis, Kelly (2015-06-07). "Eclipsing Aestheticism: Western Landscape Photography After Ansel Adams". Miranda (11). doi: 10.4000/miranda.6920 . ISSN   2108-6559.
  14. ↑ Read, Shirley; Simmons, Mike (2016-12-19). Photographers and Research: The role of research in contemporary photographic practice. Taylor & Francis. ISBN   978-1-317-54906-2.
  15. 1 2 Wells, Liz (2011-07-30). Land Matters: Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN   978-0-85772-035-1.
  16. ↑ "Volume 12 Issue 2 – GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies – Duke University Press". read.dukeupress.edu.
  17. ↑ Wells, Liz (2004). Photography: A Critical Introduction. Psychology Press. ISBN   978-0-415-30703-1.
  18. ↑ "Grant Program". Art Matters Foundation. Retrieved 2019-04-01.
  19. ↑ Sandiford, Timothy. "Frazier Teaching Award: Call for Nominations" . Retrieved 2019-04-01.
  20. ↑ "CAA News" (PDF). CAA News. 20 (4): 14. Summer 1995 – via College Art Association.
  21. ↑ Cerna, Antonio Gonzalez (15 July 1999). "11th Annual Lambda Literary Awards". Lambda Literary.
  22. ↑ "CEPA Gallery 2001". www.cepagallery.org. Archived from the original on 1 April 2019. Retrieved 1 April 2019.
  23. ↑ "Deborah Bright honored at Society for Photographic Education Northeast Regional Conference" . Retrieved 1 April 2019.
  24. ↑ "Museum of Contemporary Photography". www.mocp.org.
  25. ↑ "Phillips Academy – Addison Gallery of American Art – Deborah Bright, Bloody Lane: Battle of Antietam (Maryland). September 17, 1862. Duration: one da". accessaddison.andover.edu.
  26. ↑ "PINK & BENT: Art of Queer Women". Leslie-Lohman Museum. 2008-05-21. Archived from the original on 2019-03-27. Retrieved 2019-04-01.
  27. ↑ "UCR ARTS". ucrarts.ucr.edu. Archived from the original on 2019-04-01. Retrieved 2019-04-01.
  28. ↑ "Deborah Bright | Center for Creative Photography". ccp.arizona.edu. Retrieved 2019-04-01.
  29. ↑ "Light Work Collection / Individual / Deborah Bright [Bright, Deborah]". collection.lightwork.org. Retrieved 2019-04-01.
  30. ↑ "Beaumont Hamel, Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916. - Bright, Deborah". V and A Collections. 28 April 2019.[ permanent dead link ]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.