Linda Connor

Linda Connor (born in New York, November 18, 1944) is an American photographer living in San Francisco, California. She is known for her landscape photography.

She has photographed in a multitude of countries throughout her career including, but not limited to, India, Mexico, Thailand, Ireland, Peru, and Nepal. Connor was a professor for the photography department at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she had taught since 1969. From 1985 to 1999 she also served as a board member for Friends of Photography. That same year, Connor then became founder & president of Photo Alliance.

Early life and career
Connor began working in photography at 17, exploring her interest in spiritualism. Her early photographic influences include Walker Evans, Emmet Gowin, Harry Callahan, Julia Margaret Cameron and Frederick Sommer.

She attended the Rhode Island School of Design between 1963 and 1967 where she received a BFA in Photography. She later attended the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology between the years of 1967–1969, where she received her MFA.

In 1969, Connor began teaching at San Francisco Art Institute, instructing graduates and undergraduates for over 40 years.

Her first group exhibition was Vision and Expression at George Eastman House, in 1968 in Rochester, NY. In the entirety of her career she has received 11 awards, held over 40 solo exhibitions, and was featured in over 20 group exhibitions. These awards include a Guggenheim and three National Endowment for the Arts grants.

Style and technique
One of Connor's most notable images include a photograph of a ceremonial cloth carefully wrapped around a tree trunk in Bali, petroglyphs hidden in the cliff dwellings of Arizona, star trails in Mexico, and votive candles arranged for ceremonial rites at Chartres. In her early work, Connor used an 8×10 inch Century View camera with a soft focus lens as a mechanism to imbue her photographs with a sense of abstraction. In her later work, Connor adjusted her camera to provide much greater clarity and detail. To achieve a sense of the mystical with a sharp lens, however, Connor photographed items and structures that are already perceived as mystical in themselves. In India and Nepal, she found sacred landscapes with ritual magic that she could photograph with a sharp lens and still achieve a sense of timelessness. Connor’s books present her photographs without titles (which are given at the end of her books) and with the places mixed up in no recognizable geographic or chronological order according to emotion and tone.

. In 2010, she began having her work reprinted in such varied formats as archival pigment prints, as an accordion-shaped book, and as large-format prints on silk.

Petroglyphs
Some of Connor's photographs included petroglyphs. Connor and four other photographs attempted to preserve the petroglyphs photographically, resulting in the book, Marks in Place: Contemporary Responses to Prehistoric Rock Art (1988). A 1996 The New Yorker essay asserted that the photos "combine generalized forms, like shadows and silhouettes, with richly compelling detail." Connor captures man-made elements in natural environments in order to evoke spiritualism, "addressing quite literally the issue of how people have made their mark upon the landscape."

The Olson House
The Olson House is a colonial farmhouse located in Cushing, Maine. The popularity of this farmhouse came from its depiction in painter Andrew Wyeth's famed Christina's World. Connor is not the only artist to take photographs of Olson House. The location has also been photographed by such notable artists Paul Caponigro and George Tice. In 2006, Connor was commissioned to photograph the site by the Cincinnati Art Museum. Though a few of her photographs of the Olson House reference Wyeth, her depiction nonetheless accomplishes the difficult task of being distinctive and separate from Wyeth's.

Spiral Journey and Odyssey
Connor collected her life's photographic projects in two books, one titled Spiral Journey and the other titled Odyssey: Photographs by Linda Connor. Spiral Journey is an extensive retrospective book and exhibitions of her photographs made between 1967 and 1990 in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. Odyssey: Photographs by Linda Connor is another retrospective book and exhibitions published by Chronicle Books in 2008 containing 133 photographs. The exhibitions toured across art museums in the US from 2008 – 2011 with a monograph containing "transcripts of conversations between Connor, Robert Adams and Emmet Gowin." These retrospectives make clear that Connor's primary interest has been exploring places "steeped in the passage of time and resonant with spirituality.” Both works primarily consist of landscape photography in relation to culture and to spiritualism, using an 8x10 inch view camera and printed on slow contact print paper.

Feminism in landscape photography
Like other women photographers working within the subject matter, Connor contends that men have traditionally photographed landscapes. She offers instead a "theory of women's landscape imagery, one that posits a more intimate, emotional response to Nature because women somehow have more affinity with it." (Deborah Bright, p. 138) In a public lecture, Connor refers to photographer Gretchen Garner's thesis, "Reclaiming Paradise," Connor stated that male landscape photographers aim to 'conquer' the land with their photographs. Connor stated “is it too farfetched... to link man's passion for new lands, high places, the challenges of nature, landscape photography with pissing? This is territorial claiming and marking at its most basic. And what better place to piss off of than the top of a mountain-marking a vista." Although Connor's view has been criticized as "essentialist," she is not alone in believing that her landscapes convey a symbiotic relationship with nature.

Awards

 * 2005       Honored Educator, Society of Photographic Educators
 * 2002       Flintridge Foundation Award for Visual Artists
 * 2001       Flintridge Foundation Award for Visual Artists
 * 1998       Best Book of the Year, 21st- A Contemporary Photography Journal, for On the Music of Spheres
 * 1997       7th Annual LifeWork Award, Falkirk Cultural Center
 * 1994       National Endowment for the Arts, Travel Grant
 * 1988       Charles Pratt Award
 * 1988       National Endowment for the Arts, Individual Grant
 * 1986       Photographer of the Year, Peer Awards, Friends of Photography, Carmel, CA
 * 1979       Guggenheim Fellowship
 * 1976       National Endowment for the Arts, Individual Grant

Solo exhibitions
2017       LINDA CONNOR – Photographs, G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle, WA

2017       Linda Connor: Gravity, Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, Tampa, FL

2013       Linda Connor: From Two Worlds, di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa, CA

2013       Linda Connor: Continuum, Candela Books + Gallery, Richmond, VA

2012       Linda Connor, Clark Gallery, Lincoln, MA

2012       From Two Worlds, Haines Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2011       Odyssey: The Photographs of Linda Connor, Point Light Gallery, Surry Hills, Australia

2011       Linda Connor: New Direction, Viewpoint Gallery, Sacramento, CA

2010       Odyssey: The Photographs of Linda Connor, Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA

2010       Odyssey: The Photographs of Linda Connor, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI

2010       Linda Connor, Clark Gallery, Lincoln, MA

2010       Linda Connor: New Work, Newspace Center for Photography, Portland, OR

2009       Odyssey: the photographs of Linda Connor, Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ

2009       Odyssey: the photographs of Linda Connor, Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ

2009       Linda Connor, Joseph Bellows Gallery, La Jolla, CA

2009       Odyssey: The Photographs of Linda Connor, Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona, FL

2008       Himalayas, Haines Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2007       Linda Connor Photographs, Sacramento State University, Sacramento, CA

2007       Olson House Photographs, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH

2007       Linda Connor, Department of Design Gallery, Mariposa Hall, Sacramento State, Sacramento, CA

2006       Linda Connor Photographs, Sun Valley Art Museum, Ketchum, ID

2005       A Clear Vision” by Linda Connor, The Creative Center for Photography Freestyle, Los Angeles, CA

2004       Linda Connor: Starfields & Constellations, Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York, NY

2003       Linda Connor: Continuum, Haines Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2003       Time, Place, Sequences, Sonoma Museum of Visual Art at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, Santa Rosa, CA

2003       Linda Connor: Photographs, Photo Gallery International, Tokyo Japan

2001       Linda Connor, Glen Horowitz Bookseller, East Hampton, NY

2001       The Heavens, G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle, WA

2001       Recent Photographs, Haines Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2001       Towards Light, Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York, NY

1997       Linda Connor, Life Work Award, Falkirk Cultural Center, San Rafael, CA

1997       Linda Connor, PARTS Photographic Arts, Minneapolis, MN

1997       Linda Connor, Spectrum Gallery, Fresno, CA

1996       Linda Connor – Diptychs, photo-eye Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

1994       Earthly Constellations, National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.

1993       Earthly Constellations, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA

1992       Harry Callahan & Linda Connor, Light Factory, Charlotte, NC

1992       Earthly Constellations, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA

1990       Spiritual Journey, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL

1988       Linda Connor, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

1988       Gallery Min, Tokyo, Japan

1986       Falkirk Cultural Center, San Rafael, California

1982       Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

1973       Light Gallery, New York City, N.Y.

Group exhibitions
2023       The Curatorial Imagination of Walter Hopps, The Menil Collection, Houston, TX

2018       Speak to the Stones, and the Stars Answer, Haines Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2017       Shadowland: Photographs from the Collection, Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO

2017       Pop- Up, G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle, WA

2017       Maija Fiebig, Thuy-Van Vu and Linda Connor, G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle, WA

2017       The Poetry of Place, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH

2017       The Sun Placed in the Abyss, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH

2016       LUX: The Radiant Sea, Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York, NY

2015       Regarding Trees: Vintage and Contemporary Selections, Joseph Bellows Gallery, San Diego, CA

2015       The Mapmaker's Dream, Haines Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2015       DWELL, G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle, WA

2014       Local Treasures: Bay Area Photography, Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, CA

2014       Starstruck: The Fine Art of Astrophotography, James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, PA

2012       SOLAR, photo-eye Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

2012       When Heaven Meets Earth, Datz Museum of Art, Gwangju-si, Gyeonggi-do, Korea

2012       Tracing Light, Datz Museum of Art, Gwangju-si, Gyeonggi-do, Korea

2012       Growth & Gravity: Linda Connor & Yoshitomo Saito, Goodwin Fine Art Gallery, Denver, CO

2012       Consilience: Photographers Operating at the Intersection of Art & Science, International Center of Photography, New York, NY

2000       Three Landscape Photographers, photo-eye Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

1994       Allan Chasanoff Photographic Collection: Tradition and the Unpredictable, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX

1994       Selections from the Permanent Collection: Image and Text, Center for Creative Photography, the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

1993       Mexico through Foreign Eyes, International Center for Photography, New York

1991       Between Home and Heaven: Contemporary American Landscape Photography, National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC

1990       Photographs by American Women Artists, California Museum of Photography, UC Riverside, Riverside, CA

1988       Landscapes from the Permanent Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

1986       Artist in Mid-Career, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA

1985       American Images, Photography 1945–80, Barbican Art Gallery, London, England

1982       The Contact Print, Friends of Photography, Carmel, CA

1979       American Photography in the '70, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

1977       Mirrors and Windows – American Photography Since 1960, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY

1968       Vision and Expression, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY

Collections

 * Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
 * Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
 * International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY
 * J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA
 * Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
 * National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON
 * Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England
 * San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
 * Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
 * Stanford Art Museum, Palo Alto, CA
 * Yale Art Museum, Yale University, CT
 * Vassar College Art Gallery, Arlington, NY
 * Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI
 * National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.
 * Yildiz University, Istanbul, TU
 * Honolulu Academy of Art, Honolulu, HI
 * Canadian Center for Photography
 * Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA
 * San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA
 * New Mexico State University Art Gallery, University Park, NM
 * The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN