Lynn Geesaman (b. 1938)
Lynn Geesaman creates large-scale, color photographs of public parks and formal gardens throughout the United States and Europe. Exploring the artificial nature of these cultivated landscapes, Geesaman’s highly aestheticized images emphasize geometry and form over subject matter. The tension between abstraction and representation is present in much of her work and is achieved partly through her specific printing technique. This process intensifies the color and gives her photographs a soft, almost out-of-focus, quality, which evokes the early Pictorialist photographers. Through these dreamlike presentations, the artist taps into the emotional undercurrent that connects her to each of the places she photographs, offsetting the initial, highly formal look of the work.
Geesaman was born in 1938 in Cleveland, Ohio, and graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in physics. She has won numerous grants and awards including the Bush Foundation Artist Fellowship in 1991 and the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Visual Arts Fellowship Award for the Midwest, 1993-1994. Her work has been exhibited in numerous institutions including International Center of Photography, New York; the Houston Center for Photography; The Center for Photography at Woodstock, New York; the Tucson Museum of Art; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe. Her work is represented in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris.
