Joanne Leonard is an American photographer, photo collage artist, and

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her work has been included in major art history textbooks and has been shown internationally in galleries and museums.

Early life

Joanne Leonard was born in Los Angeles in 1940 to P. Alfred Leonard, originally of Mannheim, Germany, and Marjorie Rosenfeld Leonard. She has a twin sister, Eleanor (Rubin), who is also an artist, and a younger sister, Barbara (Handelman). She received a B.A. in Social Science from the University of California in 1962. As infants, she and her twin sister were cast as a baby in the film ''The Lady Is Willing'' starring

Marlene Dietrich Marie Magdalene "Marlene" DietrichBorn as Maria Magdalena, not Marie Magdalene, according to Dietrich's biography by her daughter, Maria Riva ; however, Dietrich's biography by Charlotte Chandler cites "Marie Magdalene" as her birth name . (, ; ...

Career

Leonard is known for her photographs and photo collages depicting private moments and personal struggles from women's lives once considered either taboo or unimportant. Her work struck a chord with the art world in the later part of the 20th century, and she was one of the few female artists to be featured in the 3rd edition of H.W. Janson’s ''History of Art''. Her photograph, ''Julia and the Window of Vulnerability'' was chosen to illustrate the opening of the chapter, "The Modern World" in the 1991 edition of Gardner's Art Through the Ages. She was an official photographer for the

1972 Winter Olympics The 1972 Winter Olympics, officially the and commonly known as Sapporo 1972 (), were a winter multi-sport event held from February 3 to 13, 1972, in Sapporo, Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan. It was the first Winter Olympic Games to take place outside ...

. She taught art and interdisciplinary courses at the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design and now holds the title of Diane M. Kirkpatrick and Griselda Pollock Distinguished University Professor Emerita. She has one daughter, Julia. Leonard's influence on the field of photography has been for making images of things, places, and people from women’s realms and private spaces—from a woman’s own perspective. A large body of her work is in photo collage, made with the goal of juxtaposing the intimate with social questions or political issues that are circulating today in the world. She is happily known for distinguished photo collage work as well.

Collections

Leonard's work is held by major collections, including: *

International Center of Photography The International Center of Photography (ICP) is a photography museum and school at 84 Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. ICP's photographic collection, reading room, and archives are at Mana Contemporary in Jer ...

in New York City * Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University in Stanford, California *

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961 ...

The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the third-largest museum in the world and the largest art museum in the Americas. With 5.36 million v ...

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

(MoMA) in New York, which holds 62 of her photographs, all of which are digitized and available on their website *

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...

, Washington, D. C. *

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art, modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art ...

(SFMOMA) *

University of Michigan Museum of Art The University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) is one of the largest university art museums in the United States, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with . Built as a war memorial in 1909 for the university's fallen alumni from the Civil War, Alu ...

* Victoria & Albert Museum *

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

Quotations

* ''I built a darkroom when I could have fixed up a kitchen.'' * ''My camera has always sought the beauty and light in a moment.'' * ''Feminism is a tool for looking at what's missing.'' * ''The making of the work, as miserable as I was (and it was a miserable time for me), was also a time of great excitement because I was doing something I had actually never seen before. I was finding ways to represent something I had no idea how to do''. * ''Anne Frank's Diary, for all the horror it conveyed, also said that a young girl's thoughts, and life, and everyday events could be important.''

Videos

Joanne Leonard: A Life in Pictures
by the University of Michigan Press
Collecting Conversations: Joanne Leonard
part of the Ransom Center series "Collecting Conversations: Five Women in American Photography" by the University of Texas at Austin

Bibliography

Photographic Memoirs

*
Newspaper Diary: Trompe l’Oeil Photographs
with essays by Amanda Krugliak and Wendy Kozol, University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities, 10 color plates, 5 incidental figures, with essays, 2 details in endpapers, 20 pages. 2012.

Manuscript

Woman by Three
Menlo Park. Pacific Coast Publishers. 1969. First Edition. Illustrated by monochrome photographs.

Works from 1960s - present

* Early Work - Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, 1963 * West Oakland – 1963-72 * Family and Friends – 1962 - present * High School Drum Corps - 1966 * Journal of a Miscarriage - 1973. A series of 30 prints featuring photo-collages, which depict a miscarriage, fertility and reproductive issues
in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum - UK
* Julia (daughter) with concentration - 1975-95 and sporadically, continuing to present * Interiors – 1977-early 1980s. Home interiors photographed in conjunction with Human Arts and Technology (HAT) – a project funded by National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) Photography Surveys grant. Ultimately, the series incorporated images made earlier in the 1960s in West Oakland. * Not Losing Her Memory (photographs and collages focusing on women in Leonard's family and her mother’s memory loss – 1980s and 1990s * Roots and Wings - 1980s and 1990s * Newspaper Diary Series – 2006 - present

Exhibitions

Reproductive: Health, Fertility, Agency
at Museum of Contemporary Photography, 19 Jan – 23 May 2021 * National Gallery of Art

6 Oct 2024 – 6 Apr 2025, and related featur

* HackelBury
Joanne Leonard: Vintage Photographs and Early Collages
29 May - 8 Jul 2025

External link

Official website
Being in Pictures.com

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Leonard, Joanne 1940 births Living people 20th-century American photographers University of Michigan faculty 20th-century American women photographers University of California alumni American women academics 21st-century American women