Merry Moor Winnett

Merry (Moor) Winnett (1951–1994) was an American photographer noted for experimental imagery.

Early life and education Merry Moor was born on November 24, 1951, in Newport News, Virginia to Florence Corinne Davidson and Willard L. Moor. After her parents divorced in 1973, she and her brother lived with their mother in Tampa, Florida. She attended Arthur Hill High School in Saginaw, Michigan between 1964 and 1969, then went on to Michigan State University and the University of South Florida, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Art in 1975, magna cum laude.

The techniques Winnett used included Van Dyke brown, split-toning, stitching, tinting, and infrared. An influence on Winnett was the printmaker Donald Saff, who in 1971 had been named the Dean of Fine Arts at USF. He encouraged experimentation with all media including photography as a tribute to his colleague Robert Rauschenberg, who lived nearby in Captiva. Winnett, who had been interested in photography since childhood, was enthusiastic about the new policies at USF.

Later career By the late 1970s, Winnett had won awards in photography competitions in Florida. During the next fourteen years, she gained international recognition and produced a body of work showcasing her techniques and imagery.

Throughout her career, she used a 35 mm Minolta camera, model SRT 101, with a Minolta 21 mm lens along with Kodak Plus-X or infrared film. Over half of the photographs in this series were inspired by a class (The Moon, Fact and Fancy) that she team-taught at Guilford College in 1991. This issue celebrated the 150th year since the invention of photography with tributes to some outstanding women photographers historically and currently. Winnett wrote her own summary, which revealed how and why she did her artwork. She described her techniques as gender-specific, especially her hand-stitching (sewing) and other decorative embellishments like sequins, ribbons, and metallic foils. She believed that male and female artists have different perspectives even when addressing similar concepts. Other environmental activities included discussions of best practices for teaching photography and ways to operate an environmentally safe darkroom.