Janet L. Pritchard

Professor of Photography

MA + MFA, University of New Mexico

Before pursuing a career in photography, Janet 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 deep regional differences within the United States. Her methodology, described as historical empathy, relies on archival materials to guide her depictions of landscapes as expressions of time and place, situating landscape photography at the intersection of nature and culture.

In her current project, Abiding River: Connecticut River Views & Stories, she photographs the Connecticut River landscape as a complex interconnected system. She relies on history and science 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 nature, culture, and history, and Dwelling: Expressions of Time, which evokes layers of time, human and geologic, found in the landscape of southern New England. Her book More than Scenery is due in fall 2022 from George F. Thompson Publishing.

She has received several honors and awards: John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship; Connecticut Office of the Arts Artist Fellowships; American Antiquarian Society Jay and Deborah Last Fellowships; National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Scholar, Smith Center for Cartography, Newberry Library; Artist-in-Residence fellowships at Ucross Foundation, Jentel Foundation, Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University, Millay Foundation, and the Vindolanda Trust; UConn Research Excellence Program and School of Fine Arts Research Grant awards, and Humanities Institute Fellowship. Her exhibition venues include Philadelphia Museum of Art; RISD Museum, Providence; Fruitlands and New Bedford Art Museums, Massachusetts; Fraction Magazine; FlakPhoto; Lenscratch; International Center for Photography, New York; Martha Schneider Gallery, Chicago; Photographic Resource Center, Boston; and the National Trust for Historic Preservation traveling exhibition America’s Uncommon Places.

Pritchard is a Professor, Area Coordinator, and Graduate Advisor in Photography and an Affiliated Faculty Member of the Center for Environmental Sciences & Engineering and the Institute of the Environment at the University of Connecticut. She also has taught at Tyler School of Art, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 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.

Pritchard’s photographs can be seen on the following websites:

http://JanetPritchard.com/

http://www.Like-a-Whisper.com/