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Melissa Ann Pinney

Born:
Pen Name: None

Connection to Illinois: Pinney lives in Evanston.

Biography: Melissa Ann Pinney is a fine art photographer and teaches photography at Columbia College Chicago. A Guggenheim fellow, her work has been widely exhibited and is included in the permanent collections at such renowned institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern art.


Awards:

Primary Literary Genre(s): Photography

Primary Audience(s): Adult readers

Email: maphotoinfo@gmail.com
Website: http://www.melissaannpinney.com
Melissa Ann Pinney on WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=melissa++ann+pinney


Selected Titles

Girl ascending /
ISBN: 1935195115 OCLC: 612960304

Center for American Places at Columbia College Chicago, [Chicago] : 2010.

Overview: For nearly thirty years, Melissa Ann Pinney has been photographing girls and women, from infancy to old age, to portray how feminine identity is constructed, taught, and communicated. Pinney's work depicts not only the rites of American womanhood, but also the informal passages of girlhood and adolescence. With each view - from solitary subjects in pensive moments to complex family and social situations - the audience gains a richer understanding of the connections between a daughter and her parents, grandparents, and the larger world of friends and society. The pictures also reflect the ways in which a girl's world in 2010 differs from the world Pinney knew growing up in the 1960s, and the ways in which the making of a person can transcend time and place. Girl Ascending is a sequel to Pinney's widely praised first book, Regarding Emma: Photographs of American Women and Girls. Of that previous book Janina Ciezaldo wrote in Aperture, "Pinney brings compositional integrity, knowledge of color, and a Midwestern richness of light to her inquiries." This second volume is even more accomplished, mature, and stylistically consistent. As David Travis writes in his introduction, "Pinney has regained that sense of wonder, making her view of girls ascending into young women both believable and enchanting." Pinney's photographs are powerful and insightful. As social and artistic documents, they reveal the subtle and bold aspects of feminine identity as it is expressed in American places and spaces, both private and public.

Regarding Emma :
ISBN: 1930066147 OCLC: 53158498

Overview: For more than fifteen years, Melissa Ann Pinney has been making photographs of girls and women, from infancy to old age, to portray how feminine identity is constructed, taught, and communicated. Her work depicts not only the rites of American womanhood - a prom, a wedding, a baby shower, a tea party - but the informal passages of girlhood: combing a doll's hair, doing laundry with a mother, smoking a cigarette at a state fair. With each view, we gain a greater understanding of the connections between mother and daughter, and by extension the larger world of family, friends, and society. Pinney's approach to interpreting girlhood became more complicated and complex when her daughter, Emma, was born eight years ago. Emma's childhood evoked in Pinney her own girlhood and gave her work new meaning and purpose. Ultimately, Regarding Emma shares with all of us the incremental and the ritualistic changes that take place in a woman's life over time.

Two /
ISBN: 0062334425 OCLC: 883146509

A collection of captivating and thought-provoking photographs by award-winning photographer Melissa Ann Pinney that contemplate the essence of duality in our relationships and in the world that surrounds us. Pinney, whose work is in the permanent collections of dozens of American museums, including the Metropolitan, MoMA, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Getty, aims her lens at pairs--mostly, but not always human--that display or imply elusive connections of mind, of spirit, or of simply the act of being.

 

 

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