David Avison (March 13, 1937 – March 7, 2004) was an American photographer and

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate ca ...

, best known for his use of a wide angle lens to capture nature, crowds, and portraits. Focused on

panoramic photography Panoramic photography is a technique of photography, using specialized equipment or software, that captures images with horizontally elongated fields of view. It is sometimes known as ''wide format photography''. The term has also been applied to ...

, Avison photographed Chicago's urban landscapes, turning to Chicago's beaches for his contribution to the documentary project Changing Chicago (1987–88,

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mil ...

). Avison spent the bulk of his photographic career in Chicago before moving to Boston in 1997. Avison received his PhD in physics from Brown University in 1966 and an M.S. in photography from the Illinois Institute of Chicago's Institute of Design. He worked as an instructor of physics at Brown University from 1959 to 1966 and an instructor of physics at Purdue University from 1967 to 1969. Combining his love of physics and photography, Avison designed and built his own panoramic cameras which he used to take all of his photographs. Two of Avison's handmade cameras as well as models and notes were donated to the

George Eastman House The George Eastman Museum, also referred to as ''George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film'', the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in ...

on his death in 2004.

Grants and awards

* NEA, 1977 * Midwest Museum of American Art, Elkhart, Indiana 1980 * IAC, 1984Changing Chicago: A Photodocumentary, 1989, University of Illinois Press, Chicago

References

External links

* * 20th-century American physicists 20th-century American photographers Brown University alumni Purdue University faculty Artists from Virginia Illinois Institute of Technology alumni 1937 births 2004 deaths Academic staff of the University of New South Wales People from Harrisonburg, Virginia Scientists from Virginia {{US-photographer-stub