Biography

Joanne Dugan is a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow in Photography. Her work was recently acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) for their permanent collections. Her work has been exhibited in the US, UK, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands and Japan. Publications include The New York Times T Magazine, the Harvard Review, Unseen and Photograph magazines, among others. Dugan was recently awarded residencies at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the Peaked Hill Trust and the Abbott Watts Residency for Photography and was a finalist for the Meijberg Art Prize at Unseen Amsterdam.

Dugan’s writing and images are published in seven books. The limited-edition monograph Mostly True is in the permanent library collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the New York Public Library and the George Eastman House. She has been editor and creative director for many artists’ published books and is the founder of The Creative Current, an ongoing lecture series that explores artistic mindfulness. She has taught at the International Center of Photography in New York City, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA and the Los Angeles Center of Photography, and lectured at institutions throughout the US and abroad. Dugan lives and works in New York City.

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

J. Paul Getty Museum permanent collection

Los Angeles County Museum of Art permanent collection

J. Paul Getty Museum library collection

International Center of Photography library collection

George Eastman House library collection

Los Angeles County Museum of Art library collection

New York Public Library photography book collection

Banana Republic corporate art collection

Alliance Capital corporate art collection

Numerous private collections in the US and abroad

Artist Statement

Satori #21, New York City, 2018 Gelatin Silver Photogram Print Collage (Grid of 25 single 2x2.5" handmade silver gelatin cameraless photogram prints) 20 x 16 in Edition 1/3

Satori #21, New York City, 2018

Gelatin Silver Photogram Print Collage (Grid of 25 single 2x2.5" handmade silver gelatin cameraless photogram prints)

20 x 16 in

Edition 1/3

" I use my hands to apply light directly onto traditional analog photographic printing papers to make abstract, gridded camera-less works that explore the visual intersections between photography, painting, and mindfulness meditation. Using light (which moves at 186,000 miles per second) as an allegorical subject, I work in both in a traditional wet darkroom and outside in open air, making repetitive grids of Photograms (photographic images created without a camera by shining light onto objects), Luminograms (light directly applied to traditional light-sensitized papers)and Cyanotypes (photography’s oldest printing process) that are a direct response to my personal ongoing contemplative practices.


I have never been fully comfortable with the stillness and singularity of a flat photograph, whether on a digital screen or as a three-dimensional object. Through my practice I seek to unearth the potential for the movement hidden within traditional still photographic processes. I am attracted to photographic abstraction and collaged, repeated forms because they allow for open interpretation by the viewer and an opportunity for visual encounters that can evoke a quiet interconnectedness to all things. The final works become as much about the reactions of the viewer as they are about the visual presence of the works themselves, or in the words of James Turrell, “I hope that when you see my work you are looking at yourself looking.” Every piece I make is a visual reminder to bring my attention back to the present".

 

Satori is inspired by the ancient spiritual tradition of using repetitive geometric visual aids to help focus attention while meditating. I connect this to photography by using the traditional wet darkroom as a place of contemplation and the making of handmade silver gelatin photographic prints—often abstract cameraless Photograms and Luminograms assembled into intricate gridded forms—as an important part of my meditation practice. These works are a modern interpretation of the ancient Tantric yantra, a sacred geometric diagram used for contemplative practices, meant to be gazed repeatedly to invoke a state of higher consciousness. Many of the works incorporate a visual ‘disruption,’ in which one frame in a gridded composition stands out as different from the others. This is meant to symbolize the flash of insight that can occur in meditation. In Buddhist practice, this awakening is sometimes called, ‘Satori,’ or enlightenment.

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