//biog.//
jerry n. uelsmann
What a photographer! This is a guy who since the late 20th century has been at the forefront of turning photographer into the highest form of art. The integration of the real and the surreal in his work is unique. You know a Uelsmann when you see one because he seamlessly grafts composite images in black and white. His photographs combine several negatives to create surreal landscapes that interweave images of trees, rocks, water and human figures in new and unexpected ways.
Jerry Norman Uelsmann was born in Detroit, Michigan, US, on June 11, 1934, the second son of an independent grocer. He attended public schools and was never a particularly diligent student. During his high school years he became interested in photography as a serious vocation. Uelsmann enrolled at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1953, received his B.F.A. in 1957 and his M.S.
and M.F.A. from Indiana University in 1960. He taught
at the University of Florida from 1960 until recently, and
held the position of Graduate Research Professor at UF
since 1974. Uelsmann received a Guggenheim Fellowship
in 1967 and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
in 1972. He is a founding member of the
American Society for Photographic Education,
a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, and has served as a trustee of
the Friends of Photography.
Uelsmann's work has been exhibited in more than 100 solo shows in the United States and abroad over the past thirty years. His photographs are in the permanent collections of numerous museums worldwide including the Metropolitan Museum
and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the
Chicago Art Institute, The International Museum of Photography
at the George Eastman House, the
Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the
Biblioteque National in Paris, the
National Museum of American Art in Washington, the
Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the
National Galleries of Scotland, the Center for
Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona, the
National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, Japan, the
Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the
National Gallery of Canada, and the National Gallery of Australia.
