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After beginning a career as a painter, PAULA CHAMLEE discovered photography in
the mid-1980s and quickly found direct involvement with the world outside the
studio to be irresistible. Primarily self taught as a photographer, in 1990
she began to work full time with an 8x10-inch view camera. Since then she has
traveled extensively, making her photographs in the United States and in
Europe. Chamlee has been the recipient of numerous grants, including The Leeway Foundation grant for "Excellence in Photography." Her photographs have been widely exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions and are in over a score of museum collections including: the Library of Congress, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas. Her photographs are in numerous private collections both in the United States and abroad. During the early 1990s Chamlee photographed primarily in the natural landscape of the American West. Her photographs from this time, together with excerpts from her journals and an essay by Estelle Jussim, were published in 1994 in her first monograph, Natural Connections: Photographs by Paula Chamlee. Natural Connections established her reputation as a highly original artist working within the classical tradition of straight photography. In Chamlee's second book, High Plains Farm, published in 1996 in conjunction with a major traveling exhibition, she looked to her roots and photographed and wrote about the farm where she grew up on the High Plains of the Texas Panhandle. A PBS documentary film about Chamlee at work on High Plains Farm was produced by KACV-TV in Amarillo. One critic called High Plains Farm "one of the genuinely significant contributions to photography and landscape study in many a year," while another described it as "epic in its vision and intimate in its humanity." Her third book, San Francisco: Twenty Corner Markets and One in the Middle of the Block, published in 1997 concurrent with an exhibition of the photographs at the Scott Nichols Gallery in San Francisco, took a look at the uniqueness of small, family-owned markets amidst the larger, faster-paced commerce of a big city. From 1999 through 2001 she photographed primarily in Tuscany and two books from that time are currently being published. The first one Madonnina, a book celebrating the small sacred shrines that abound throughout the Tuscan countryside, will be published in the fall of 2003; the second book, Tuscany, Volume I, also to be published in the fall of 2003, will be of her photographs in the landscape and in the small towns and villages. She is also currently working on a book of of still life photographs, The Bonsai of Longwood Gardens, a collaborative work with her husband, the photographer, Michael A. Smith. full resume |
MICHAEL
A. SMITH has been working in photography since 1966. Less than a year
later, in 1967, he began photographing exclusively with an 8x10-inch view
camera, committing himself to the contact print. Later he added both an
8x20 and an 18x22-inch view camera. During his second year as a photographer,
he began teaching his own seminars and workshops, but after seven and
a half years, he stopped teaching to dedicate himself solely to the making
of his photographs. His photographic journeys during the past 33 years have taken him to every state in the continental United States and to western Canada. The results of these remarkable odysseys are included in the permanent collections of over 100 museums in the United States, Europe, and Asia, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Art Institute of Chicago, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. His commitment to the medium has resulted in nearly 200 exhibitions. In addition, he has twice received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and he has been the recipient of major commissions to photograph four American cities. In 1981, Smith's first book, the two-volume monograph, Landscapes 1975-1979, was awarded Le Grand Prix du Livre at the Rencontres Internationale de la Photographie in Arles, France. At that time, the Swiss publication Print Letter commented, "For the first time in the eleven years of the Rencontres, a deserving book has won the book prize." In 1992, Smith was honored with a 25-year retrospective exhibition at the International Museum of Photography at the Eastman House in Rochester, New York. To mark the occasion, Michael A Smith: A Visual Journey–Photographs from Twenty-Five Years was published. His first book of portraits, The Students of Deep Springs College, was published in the fall of 2000. His book of photographs from Tuscany, Tuscany, Volume II, will be published in the fall of 2003. He is also currently working on book of still life photographs, The Bonsai of Longwood Gardens, a collaborative work with his wife, the photographer, Paula Chamlee. full resume |