Lynn Davis is an American photographer known for her large-scale black-and-white photographs which are widely collected publicly and privately and are internationally exhibited.

Biography

Born in

Minneapolis Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the state's List of cities in Minnesota, most populous city. Locat ...

, Minnesota, in 1944, Davis studied at

University of Colorado The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, the University of Colorado Denver, and the U ...

between 1962 and 1964, and at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

from 1964 to 1966. She received her

Bachelor of Fine Arts A Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) is a standard undergraduate degree for students pursuing a professional education in the visual arts, Fine art, or performing arts. In some instances, it is also called a Bachelor of Visual Arts (BVA). Background ...

from the

San Francisco Art Institute San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a Private college, private art school, college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mis ...

in 1970, and in 1974 she began her career as an apprentice to

Berenice Abbott Berenice Alice Abbott (July 17, 1898 – December 9, 1991) was an American photographer best known for her portraits of cultural figures of the interwar period, New York City photographs of architecture and urban design of the 1930s, and science ...

. Davis' first exhibition hung at the

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 ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

in 1979, alongside her close friend

Robert Mapplethorpe Robert Michael Mapplethorpe ( ; November 4, 1946 – March 9, 1989) was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female Nude (art), n ...

. After her first trip to

Greenland Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...

, in 1986, she gave up photographing the human form, shifting her lens toward the monumental landscapes and cultural/architectural icons for which she is renowned. Davis lives in

Hudson, New York Hudson is a Administrative divisions of New York#City, city in and the county seat of Columbia County, New York, United States. At the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, it had a population of 5,894. On the east side of the Hudson River, f ...

with her husband, writer

Rudy Wurlitzer Rudolph "Rudy" Wurlitzer (**Rudy Wurlitzer** born January 3, 1937) is an American novelist and screenwriter. Wurlitzer's fiction includes '' Nog'', ''Flats'', ''Quake'', ''Slow Fade'', and ''Drop Edge of Yonder''. He is also the author of the t ...

. Her prints appear in the permanent collections of the

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 ...

, the

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

Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in the Near North Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary ...

, and the

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. The permanent collection of the museum spans more than 5,000 years of history with nearly 80,000 works from six continents. Follo ...

, among others. In 1999, the

J. Paul Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California, United States, housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. It is operated by the J. Paul Getty Trust, the world's wealthies ...

held an exhibition of Davis' prints, and a solo show, ''Africa'', was held at the

Center for Creative Photography The Center for Creative Photography (CCP), established in 1975 and located on the University of Arizona's Tucson campus, is a research facility and archival repository containing the full archives of over sixty of the most famous American ph ...

Tucson, Arizona Tucson (; ; ) is a city in Pima County, Arizona, United States, and its county seat. It is the second-most populous city in Arizona, behind Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix, with a population of 542,630 in the 2020 United States census. The Tucson ...

in 1999.

Publications

Books showcasing Davis' work include: *
Ice: 1986-2007
'' New York: Melcher Media, 2015 (Monograph, with foreword by:

Patti Smith Patricia Lee Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer, songwriter, poet, painter, author, and photographer. Her 1975 debut album '' Horses'' made her an influential member of the New York City-based punk rock movement. Smith has fu ...

) *
Sacred Landscapes: The Threshold Between Worlds
'' New York: Sterling, 2010 (Collaborative project with text by: A.T. Mann * "Space Project," Monacelli Press/Random House, November 2009 (With text by:

Alan Weisman Alan H. Weisman (born March 24, 1947) is an American author, professor and journalist. Education and career Weisman was born on March 24, 1947, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He holds a bachelor's degree in literature and a master's degree in jou ...

) * ''Illumination,'' New York: DK Adult, 2007 (Monograph, with text by:

Pico Iyer Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer (born 11 February 1957), known as Pico Iyer, is an English-born essayist and novelist known chiefly for his travel writing. He is the author of numerous books on crossing cultures including ''Video Night in Kathman ...

) * ''Persia,'' Paris: Galerie Karsten Greve, 2006 (Exhibition Catalog) *
Water
'' New York: Edwynn Houk Gallery, 2005 (Exhibition Catalog) * ''American Monument,'' New York: Monacelli Press, 2004 (Monograph, with text by:

Witold Rybczynski Witold Rybczynski (born 1 March 1943) is a Canadian American architect, professor and writer. He is currently the Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor Emeritus of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania. Early life Rybczynski was born in E ...

) *
Ice
'' New York: Edwynn Houk Gallery, 2001 (Exhibition Catalog) *

'' New York: Edwynn Houk Gallery, 2000 (Exhibition Catalog) * ''Monument,'' Santa Fe: Arena Editions, 1999 (Monograph with text by:

& Rudolph Wurlitzer) * ''Bodywork: 1978-1985,'' Kilchberg/Zurich: Edition Stemmle, 1994 (Monograph) *
In Response to Place: Phototgraphs from the Nature Conservancy's Last Great Places
'' Washington D.C.: The Nature Conservancy (pages 80–89, also includes works by photographers:

Lee Friedlander Lee Friedlander (; born July 14, 1934) is an American photographer and artist. In the 1960s and 1970s, Friedlander evolved an influential and often imitated visual language of urban "social landscape," with many of his photographs including fra ...

Annie Leibovitz Anna-Lou Leibovitz ( ; born October 2, 1949) is an American Portrait photography, portrait photographer best known for her portraits, particularly of celebrities, which often feature subjects in intimate settings and poses. Leibovitz's Polaroid ...

Sally Mann Sally Mann (born Sally Turner Munger; May 1, 1951) is an American photographer known for making large format black and white photographs of people and places in her immediate surroundings: her children, husband, and rural landscapes, as well as ...

and

Mary Ellen Mark Mary Ellen Mark (March 20, 1940 – May 25, 2015) was an American photographer known for her photojournalism, documentary photography, portraiture, and advertising photography. She photographed people who were "away from mainstream society and t ...

, among others) * ''Wonders of the African World'' ( Henry Louis Gates, Jr.; New York: Knopf, Fall 1999) Her work also appears in the following publications (non-comprehensive list): * ''El Silencio,'' pages 70–78 (Matador, Issue K, 2008) * ''An Eye for the Sacred,'' pages 56–63, 94 and 97 (

Shambhala Sun ''Lion's Roar'' (previously ''Shambhala Sun'') is an independent, bimonthly magazine (in print and online) that offers a nonsectarian view of "Buddhism, Culture, Meditation, and Life". Presented are teachings from the Buddhist and other contempla ...

, January 2008) * ''An Artist’s Portrayal of China, '' page 31 (Northeast Antique & Auction, 2003) * ''The Questing Eye,'' pages 74–77 ( House & Garden, 2003) * ''Abitareverona Magazine, '' No. 3 (2002) * ''Along the Silk Route,'' pages 51–57 (Portfolio: China,

, September 2002) * ''Reportage dal Mondo dei Sogni,'' page 53 (Denis Curti; Vivi Milano, Belle Arti, September 2002) * ''Linee di Ghiaccio'' (Tempo Libero, September 2002) * ''John Kane: Gehlek Rinpoche Likes It That Way,'' pages 45–50 (

, July 2002) * ''Ice Memory,'' pages 30–37 (Elizabeth Kolbert; New Yorker, January 2002) * ''Les Line,'' page 124 (Audubon, March–April 2002) * ''Dal Sudan alla Groenlandia a Caccia di Architetture Naturale,'' page 9 (Francesca Memeo; La Stampa, 2002) * ''Body Icons,'' page 32 (Athens, Greece, Photographic Center of Skopelos, 1998) * ''Aperture, Moments of Grace Spirit in the American Landscape,'' page 3 (New York,

Aperture (magazine) ''Aperture'' magazine, based in New York City, is an international quarterly journal specializing in photography. Founded in 1952, ''Aperture'' magazine is the flagship publication of Aperture Foundation.http://www.aperture.org/ (official site). ...

, 1998) * ''Sea Change: The Seascape in Contemporary Photography,'' page 25 (James Hamilton-Peterson and Trudy Wilner Stack; Tucson, AZ:

, 1998) * ''Water Proof'' (Lisbon, Portugal : Centro Cultural de Belém, 1998)

Awards

* Academy Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters * Creative Artist Public Service Program Grant Lynn Davis on artnet
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References

External links

*
Official site
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Davis, Lynn American architectural photographers 1944 births Living people Environmental photography San Francisco Art Institute alumni University of Colorado Boulder alumni University of Minnesota alumni Artists from Minneapolis 20th-century American photographers 21st-century American photographers 20th-century American women photographers 21st-century American women photographers