Judith Thorpe

MFA Program Director & Professor of Photography

Art and Art History

MFA, University of Colorado at Boulder

Judith Thorpe’s creative work, The Passions, considers the historical representations of the female body in precedents such as Greek and Roman statuary and religious icons exploring the tension between idealized and real. The series, Breathing The Everyday, a visual haiku reflecting on the everyday, was published in book form in 2020. Like A Whisper is a collaborative project with Deborah Dancy, Ray DiCapua, and Janet Pritchard in which they photograph the traces of human and geologic activity on the land near Hadrian’s Wall in northern England.

Thorpe’s creative work has been exhibited at venues such as the New York International Fine Art Fair; New Britain Museum of American Art; New Bedford Art Museum; Flatfile Galleries and Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago; The American Center, New Delhi, India; Nexus Contemporary Art Center and the Atlanta Gallery of Photography, Atlanta; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem; and Jane H. Baum Gallery, New York, Graham Gallery, Albuquerque, and Ginny Williams Gallery, Denver. Artist residencies include the Visual Studies Workshop, Millay Colony for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Banff Centre for the Arts, and collaborative Artist Residency: Like A Whisper, Northumberland, UK. Grants and fellowships include the UConn Research Excellence Program, School of Fine Arts Research Grant awards, and Connecticut Office of the Arts Artist Fellowships.

Thorpe has been on the faculty at the University of Connecticut since 2001, serving as Professor of Photography and the Art and Art History Department Head for eleven years. Prior to UConn Thorpe was the Senior Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Photography at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, Chair and Associate Professor of Photography in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Colorado at Denver, and the first Executive Director of the Society for Photographic Education.

She has served on the Board of Directors of the College Art Association, National Association of Schools of Art & Design, National Association of Artists’ Organizations, National Council of Arts Administrators, Society for Photographic Education, and The Philadelphia Print Center. Thorpe received her undergraduate degree in Psychology from Regis College in Denver, MFA in Photography from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a certificate from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education Institute for Educational Management.

Selections from Judith Thorpe’s individual and collaborative photographic work can be seen at the following websites: judiththorpe.com and Like-A-Whisper.com.