Jane Calvin Photography

Jane Calvin (American, b. 1938) Untitled, 1990 Photograph Sight: 19 1/2 x 15 1/2 in. Framed: 26 7/8 x 22 1/2 x 1 1/4 in. Edition 2/10 Provenance: Collection of Robert Burge, New Y...

Chromogenic photo print. hand signed, titled and dated. This is a vintage print, printed in 1987 and editioned 2/10. Jane L. Calvin (born April 27, 1938) is an artist based in Chicago, Illinois. Jane Calvin was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her father was an avid art collector and Calvin was brought up in the art world from the time she was born. She attended classes at the Art Institute of Chicago as a young child and went on to pursue a degree in Art History from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania in 1959. Calvin worked as a private art dealer for some time before deciding to continue her education and become a fine art photographer. She graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago with her MFA in 1982.[1] Calvin later went on to be a Professor of Photography at The School of the Art Institute, Illinois Institute of Technology, and Beloit College. She was Adjunct Professor of Photography at Columbia College in Chicago until 2005. Since she started making photographs, Calvin has had exhibits across the nation as well as in Germany and China. Calvin constructs her photographs by montaging multiple slide projections and found objects into room-sized assemblages in her studio. She then photographs it, making a tableaux into which layers of meaning are woven. She does not use computer editing, just straight photography. Calvin stated, "The images can be seen as my commentary on the political and social roles projected onto society whose desires, manipulated by language and image, conflict with concerns of gender, sexuality, race and female identity." She says,“I make photographs, I don’t take them,” and in so stating she follows in the path of many Dada and Surrealist precursors, for example, German Kurt Schwitters’ famous Merzbau or Junk House (1923 and following), or Joseph Cornell’s metaphorically vast but physically modestly scaled, even private sculptural interiors of boxes (1930s and following). In her use of projected imagery within and upon the setup of her photographs, Calvin gestures toward earlier 20th century American surrealist photographer Man Ray photographic work, one example of which is Space Writing (Self-Portrait) acquired last year by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Calvin’s more recent kindred spirit – although comparatively minimalist in nature and junior chronologically – is Sandy Skoglund. The latter’s photographed installations are a hybrid of unnatural, spectral, coloration and suspended narrative. "I am a maker of meaning, not an observer of it. My medium is photography, although it is includes the processes of sculpture and installation . I build room-sized sets onto which I project images and text, recording the final result with the camera. There are no darkroom or digital tricks. The process is straight photography." For over 25 years, Calvin has been exploring contemporary society’s approach to issues of gender, female identity, sexuality, vulnerability, and love & desire. Eschewing linearity, the work stands in opposition to the simplicity and minimalism prevalent in earlier 20th century image-making. Her images are elliptical, fragmented, layered, reflecting the contemporary world as one of discontinuity and ambiguity with myriad connections, a world less temporally and spatially fixed than ever before. Through the content carried in found materials and appropriated texts, –she addresses— the social and political conditions that are just out of sight, but remain like some kind of background radiation exerting a subtle but undeniable influence on our society. Pop and pulp references throw a humorous light on cultural identity and gender roles projected onto society. The subject matter, appearing disconnected from its place and time, mysteriously overlaps our own collective awareness. –She asks the viewer to see what has been there all along.–—/> Exhibition publication, Gallery 210, University of Missouri, St Louis, 2005, 'Jane Calvin Sentences' Introduction by Terry Suhre, Director, and Essay "Jane Calvin's Phantasmagoric Spaces" by Dr. Mark White. This is a Set-Up: fab photo/fictions This exhibition looked at photographers who utilize fabricated imagery and constructed subjects to create their work. These deliberate fictions, and their position in the realms of photography and art, were explored through the work of several highly acclaimed artists: Jane Calvin, James Casebere, Gregory Crewdson, Barbara Kasten, Abelardo Morell, Patrick Nagatani...