About Janet L. Pritchard
Before pursuing a photography career, 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 significant regional differences within the United States. She devised a methodology described as historical empathy, which relies on archival materials to guide her depictions of the complex landscapes she finds at the intersection of nature and culture.
In her current project, Abiding River: Connecticut River Views & Stories, Pritchard photographs the Connecticut River landscape as a complex set of interconnected systems where the present bumps up against the past in telling ways. She relies on environmental sciences, economics, and history for greater understanding. Her earlier work includes More than Scenery: Yellowstone, An American Love Story, which views the world’s first national park through the lenses of culture, history, and nature, and Dwelling: Expressions of Time, which evokes layers of time, human and geologic, found in the landscape of southern New England. Her Yellowstone book was published in late 2022 by George F. Thompson Publishing in association with the Slip 21 Charitable Fund and Center for the Study of Place.
Honors and awards include the distinction of a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship; Connecticut Office of the Arts Artist Fellowship; National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Scholar, Newberry Library; The American Antiquarian Society’s Jay and Deborah Last Fellowship; Artist-in-Residence fellowships at Ucross Foundation, Jentel Foundation, Millay Foundation, Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University, and the Vindolanda Trust; and UConn Research Excellence Program and School of Fine Arts Research Grant awards, and Humanities Institute Fellowship. Her exhibition venues include the Philadelphia Museum of Art; RISD Museum; Fruitlands Museum; New Bedford Art Museum; International Center for Photography; Martha Schneider Gallery; Photographic Resource Center, Boston; Fraction Magazine; FlakPhoto; Lenscratch; and the National Trust for Historic Preservation traveling exhibition America’s Uncommon Places.
Pritchard is a Professor of Art, Area Coordinator, and Graduate Advisor at the University of Connecticut. She also has taught at Tyler School of Art, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Colorado (Boulder & Denver), and the University of New Mexico. 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. She resides with her family in the Quiet Corner of Connecticut, while her older sons live in Colorado.
Additional work can be seen at:
Contact
email: JanetPritchardPhotography@gmail.com