Terry Evans

Terry Evans (born 1944) is an American photographer. After growing up in Kansas City, she moved to Salina, Kansas, where she was inspired to explore the themes of human relationship with the land. Evans' work explores the environmental impact of humans on the landscape in the American Midwest and is notable for aerial perspective photos of prairies. Her work has been collected by several Museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1996, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her work in photography.

Life and work Evans was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1944. Evan's career as an artist started in 1968, when she graduated from the University of Kansas with a BFA in painting and commercial art. With no formal training in photography, Evans' father taught her the basics and helped develop the skills of what is now her preferred medium. Early in her career, Evans began to take on photojournalistic work consisting of mostly mundane subjects of interest to her, documenting poverty, farmers, her own family, and the residents of her hometown. What started out as a favor to photograph "virgin prairies" for a friend, turned into a subject that would drive Evans' career as a photographer. Interested in the prairies ecology and ground pattern, Evans thought "if I could understand this ecosystem and see these patterns that I would understand how the universe worked". The interest began over 40 years ago, when she started photographing undisturbed "virgin" prairies.

Meet me at the Trinity, 2013–2014 In 2013, Evans explored the relationship between people and their local environments, particularly that of the Trinity River in Fort Worth, Texas and its recreational users. In 1928, the moving of the river's West and Elm fork into new riverbeds altered the landscape drastically, resulting in an increase of pollution from runoff. Despite the River's current state, Evans creatively documented Trinity River by using her aerial-photo technique, focusing on form, color and the individuals that encompass the space. The retrospective consisted on 100 photographs from Evans, ranging from early black and white portrait work starting in 1971, to the recent colorful images of aerial landscapes. Evans' major publications include Revealing Chicago: An Aerial Portrait, Disarming the Prairie, and Prairie: Images of Ground and Sky.