Gretchen Garner

Gretchen Garner (December 27, 1939 – February 15, 2017) was an American art historian, curator, writer, teacher, and self-taught photographer.

Biography

Education Garner was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She enrolled at the University of Chicago in 1965 and received her BA degree in Art History. After graduating, Garner spent a year studying photography on her own with her father's 35mm camera. Between 1973 and 1975, Garner studied photography at the School of Art institute in Chicago where she took her MFA.

Career While working as a photographer, photo editor, and instructor Garner raised two children in Chicago and Evanston, Illinois. In the 1980s, Garner was inspired by the countryside around Chicago and which inspired her to take up outdoor photography. She then travel around the USA and Europe for a decade. Some of the landscapes Garner portrayed included Denmark, Sweden and France. During the 1980s she also served as the Head, Department of Art at the University of Connecticut from 1989 to 1992 and served as a Professor there until 1994. From there, Garner transferred to Moore College of Art and Design to become an Academic Dean until 1997. Garner was an adjunct professor as well as visiting artist for The Ohio State University between 2003 and 2007. From 2007 to 2017 Garner resided in her residence in Columbus, Ohio until she died at the age of 77. Garner redressed the exclusion of women from the landscape canon throughout her writing. Her catalog for this exhibition became a primary source on women and modern American photography.

Contemporary landscape photography: "The New Metaphorics" In opposition to William Jenkins's New Topographics gambit, Garner advocated for a “New Metaphorics.” Garner, along with photographer and critic Deborah Bright, critiqued the work of the New Topographics as having a macho undertone. Garner's work showcased her own perspectives on documentary photography. The debate over documentary landscape photography remains an important component in contemporary landscape photography, but especially that of the 1970–80's.

Publications Disappearing Witness: Change in Twentieth-Century American Photography. Johns Hopkins Press, 2003.

Winold Reiss and the Cincinnati Union Terminal Ohio University Press; 1st ed. (2016) Six Ideas in Photography: A Celebration of Photography's Sesquicentennial, 1989. Landscapes 1981–1988, 1989. Reclaiming Paradise: American Women Photograph the Land, 1987. An Art History of Ephemera: Gretchen Garner's Catalog, Photographs, 1976–1978. "Landscapes," 1990. "Jamaica."

Exhibitions