Janet L. Pritchard

Before pursuing a career in photography, Janet L. Pritchard worked as an outdoor education instructor and spent her youth traveling between the Northeast and Rocky Mountain West. She describes herself as geographically bilingual and her early experiences led to an awareness of deep regional differences within the United States. She devised a methodology described as historical empathy, which relies on archival materials to guide her depictions of complex landscapes as expressions of time and place, while she works at the intersection of nature and culture.

In her current project, More than a River: the Connecticut River Watershed, she photographs the Connecticut River landscape as a complex set of interconnected systems where present bumps up against past in telling ways. She relies on history and science for greater understanding. Her Guggenheim Fellowship will help support work on More than a River. Although she expects the project to continue for a number of years, this award will allow her to dig more deeply into regional archives and gain greater understanding of ecological concerns throughout the watershed. Her earlier work includes Dwelling: Expressions of Time, which evokes layers of time, human and geologic, found in the landscape of southern New England and More than Scenery: Yellowstone, an American Love Story, which views the world’s first national park through the lenses of nature, culture, and history. The Yellowstone project is currently scheduled for publication in fall 2020 by George F. Thompson Publishing in association with the America Land Publishing Project under the title, More than Scenery: Yellowstone, an American Love Story.

Ms. Pritchard’s exhibition venues include: Philadelphia Museum of Art; RISD Museum, Providence; Fruitlands Museum and New Bedford Art Museum, Massachusetts; Fraction Magazine; FlakPhoto; Lenscratch; International Center for Photography, New York; Martha Schneider Gallery, Chicago; Photographic Resource Center, Boston; and the National Trust for Historic Preservation traveling exhibition America’s Uncommon Places. She is the recipient of numerous awards, and fellowships, and including: Artist-in-Residence at Jentel Foundation, Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University, Millay Foundation, Ucross Foundation, and the Vindolanda Trust; Jay and Deborah Last Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society; NEH Summer Scholar, Smith Center for Cartography, Newberry Library; UConn Research Excellence Program; and Humanities Institute Fellowship, UConn.

Ms. Pritchard is Professor, Area Coordinator, and Graduate Advisor in Photography at the University of Connecticut. She also has taught at Tyler School of Art, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of Colorado (Boulder & Denver), and University of New Mexico. Ms. Pritchard received her B.A. in art history, classics, and philosophy from the University of Colorado, and her M.A. and M.F.A. in photography from the University of New Mexico.

Selections from Janet Pritchard’s individual and collaborative photographic projects