James L. Enyeart

James Lyle Enyeart (born January 13, 1943, in Auburn, Washington; died November 28, 2025, in Santa Fe, New Mexico) was an American photographer, scholar and museum director.

Career Enyeart was the sixth director of the George Eastman Museum (then, George Eastman House) from 1989 to 1995. Before that he served as Director of the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona from 1977 to 1989. In the mid-1970s he was Director of the Friends of Photography in Carmel, California and prior to that was Curator of Photography at the Spencer Museum of art at the University of Kansas from 1968 to 1976. He has held different professorships during his lifetime, and was Founding Director of the Anne and John Marion Center for Photographic Arts at the College of Santa Fe (now Santa Fe University of Art and Design) from 1995 to 2002, now Emeritus Anne and John Marion Professor.

Awards Enyeart received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and several other awards, including the Josef Sudek Medal from the Czech Republic, the Photographic Society of Japan achievement award, and the Photokina Obelisk, Cologne, Germany.

Published works His photographs are collected by the George Eastman Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the Center for Creative Photography, Sheldon Memorial Gallery, Kiasato Museum of Photography, Japan, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and other museums and private collections.

Photo books Kansas Landscape: An Exhibition of Photographs by Jim Enyeart. University of Kansas Museum of Art, Lawrence 1971. Only monograph on Enyeart's photography. The Architecture of Saint Joseph : "The Golden Age". Photographs by James Enyeart. 1974. The Stained Glass Windows of Saint Joseph. Albrecht Art Museum, Saint Joseph 1976. James L. Enyeart (ed.). No Mountains in the Way: Kansas Survey, NEA: Photographs by James Enyeart, Terry Evans, Larry Schwarm. University of Kansas Museum of Art, Lawrence 1975.

As editor or writer James L. Enyeart (ed.). Main Street Studio: An Exhibition of Photographs of Famous Vaudeville Entertainers. Text by Orval Hixon. University of Kansas Museum of Art, Lawrence, Worldwide Books, Boston 1971. Drawings by Nine West Coast Painters. Drawings by Elmer Bischoff a. o. University of Kansas, Museum of Art, Lawrence 197?. Marion Palfi (ed.). Invisible in America. Foreword by Lee D. Witkin, catalogue by James L. Enyeart. University of Kansas Museum of Art, Lawrence 1973. James L. Enyeart (ed.), James Alinder. Kansas Album. Kansas Banker's Association, distributed by Addison House, Danbury 1977. ISBN 0-89169-024-7. Bruguière, His Photographs and His Life. Knopf, New York 1977. ISBN 0-394-40852-7. Monograph on Francis Bruguière. Steven Klindt (ed.).Jerry N. Uelsmann: Photographs from 1975–1979. Essay by Jim Enyeart. Chicago Center for Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago 1980. James L. Enyeart (ed.), Robert Heinecken, Marvin Bell a. o. Heinecken. Friends of Photography in association with Light Gallery, New York 1980 (Published in Japan as Heinecken: Selected Works, 1966-1986. Gallery Min, Tokyo 1986 [in English and Japanese]). "Clouds (1924), Edward Weston, and the Essence of the Object". In: Three Classic American Photographs: Texts and Contexts. Foreword by Aaron Scharf. American Arts Documentation Centre, and University of Exeter, Devon 1982. ISBN 0-85989-124-0. Edward Weston's California Landscapes. A New York Graphic Society, Little, Brown, Boston 1984. Monograph on Edward Weston. James Enyeart, Nancy Solomon (eds.). Henry Holmes Smith: Collected Writings 1935–1985. Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson 1986. ISBN 0-938262-10-6. Collected writings of photographer Henry Holmes Smith. Judy Dater. Twenty Years. Introduction by Enyeart. University of Arizona Press, Tucson 1986. James Enyeart, Estelle Jussim (eds.). Decade by Decade: A Survey of Twentieth-Century American Photography from the Collections of the Center for Creative Photography. Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. Little, Brown, Boston 1988. Sheldon Sampler, One Hundred American Photographs. Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and University of Nebraska, Lincoln 1988 Roger R. Bruce (ed.). Seeing the Unseen: Dr. Harold E. Edgerton and the Wonders of Strobe Alley. Introduction by James L. Enyeart, contributions by Douglas Collins and Joyce Bedi. Trust of George Eastman House, distributed by MIT Press, Cambridge (MA) 1994. ISBN 0-262-02387-3. Monograph on Harold E. Edgerton. Land, Sky, and All That Is Within: Visionary Photographers in the Southwest. Museum of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe 1998. ISBN 0-89013-366-2 (online). Jim Dine: Color Photographs. Essay by James L. Enyeart. Pace Wildenstein, New York 1999. ISBN 1-878283-88-X. Monograph about Jim Dine. Harmony of Reflected Light: The Photographs of Arthur Wesley Dow (featuring the collection of Barbara and George Wright). Museum of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe 2001. ISBN 0-89013-384-0. Monograph on Arthur Wesley Dow. The Photographs of Arthur Wesley Dow. Text by James Enyeart. Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York 2002. ISBN 0-89013-383-2. James Enyeart, Greg Glazner (eds.).Photographers, Writers, and the American Scene: Visions of Passage. Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, Arena, Santa Fe 2002. ISBN 1-891024-97-3. Lee Friedlander. Sticks & Stones. Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, distr. by D.A.P., New York 2004. ISBN 1-891024-97-3. Dan Budnik. Picturing Artists (1950s–1960s). Knoedler, New York 2007. ISBN 978-0-9789987-1-4. Willard Van Dyke. Changing the World Through Photography and Film. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque 2008. ISBN 978-0-8263-4552-3.