During my childhood I learned to take risks! One story: When I was about 10, my dad suggested we try to "sail" a canoe on the Fox River in Wisconsin in late March even though ice was till floating in the water! Fortunately we both wore life preservers. When we were out in the water, my dad suggested that we shift positions so I could learn to steer. When I was seated in the stern, I swung the rudder too quickly and swamped the canoe. We found ourselves partially submerged in 33-degree water! We dog-paddled to shore but were both freezing. Our house was a mile away through a ravine. My dad suggested I walk home and get my mother to come pick him up. When I finally dripped my way through the front door, my teeth were chattering and I my hands were turning white. My mother quickly ran a cool bath for me so I would slowly de-thaw. She was so angry at my dad, she took her sweet time going to get him.
I grew up in Appleton--a medium-sized conservative city in Wisconsin on the edge of the Fox River. I am the middle child of three daughters. My parents both grew up on farms in Nebraska and lived through the Depression of the 30's. They met at the university. My mother was creative and liked to push the constrictions of conventionality. My dad was a self-made man who survived a rocky childhood. He put himself through college, majoring in mechanical engineering. As children, we always had some creative project spread out on the dining room table. No coloring books for us! We played with homemade play dough, blocks, and learned to lash leather wallets. I sometimes helped my dad in the shop, learning to hammer and saw.
My mother was an amateur watercolor painter and she pulled me along on her excursions to paint nature. She also loved photography and took pictures of strange abstract designs in nature that no one else noticed. My dad had spent his entire childhood working, so he was determined to have as much fun as possible as an adult. Whenever he was free, the family was out in nature. We went canoeing and camping in spring, summer, and fall and skiing in the winter.
After graduating from high school, I chose to go to Antioch College (Ohio) because of its work-study program. I spent my 3rd year of college in Japan and bought a high quality 35mm camera on my first day in Tokyo. During the winter semester, I worked at home for mentally disadvantaged children’s near Kyoto. The staff nurtured the creative talents of the children.The gardens, temples and farmyards of Japan became my aesthetic teachers. Japan’s influence is evident in all my work!
In 1970, I graduated from Antioch and two years later got a Masters from the University of Michigan. Soon after I graduated, my beloved mother developed breast cancer. I was teaching 4th grade while she was gradually dying. With her death, I realized that my own life was finite. I quit teaching and decided to pursue a career in photography.
In 1978, I married Steven Nissen who I’d met in anti-war protests about Vietnam. He had just finished medical school, and we went to California for his residency. Thanks to Ansel Adams, California had become a mecca for large-format photography. I purchased a 4" X 5” view camera, learned the ‘zone' system, and set up a home darkroom. My first coherent body of work tried to capture illusions in the western desert.
When we moved to Lexington, Kentucky three years later, the lush landscape did not appeal to me. Nearby, I discovered the beautiful Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill. I soon immersed myself in shooting interiors and still lifes. I watched the sun move through the buildings, and sometimes hung objects from the Shaker pegs to photograph the shadows and highlights cast on the white walls. I traveled to thirteen villages. In 1985, Knopf published my first book titled Inner Light: the Shaker Legacy.
My next project brought me back to rural Japan. During four years, I flew back and forth to Japan five times, exploring the rural areas from north to south. With the help of my Japanese family and friends, I wrote my own text to accompany the photographs. In 1992 the Smithsonian Institution Press published Rural Japan: Radiance of the Ordinary.
In 1992 we moved to Cleveland, Ohio, and I began what would become a five-year project on interiors and still lifes in Italy. Again I focused on out-of-the-way places and gained access to historical homes through introductions. Many of the objects were mysterious and the architecture varied from simplicity of ancient sites to ornate Baroque homes. My third book, Italy: In the Shadow of Time, was released by Rizzoli in 1998.
As the science on global warming became more definitive, I became engaged with environmental issues. In 2000, I discovered the Yangtze River and the Three Gorges Dam. When I first saw the Three Gorges, few modern conveniences were available to the villagers, so people's lives still resembled the lives of their ancestors. Yet everyone knew that the dam would change life forever. On seven trips over 2.5 years I watched the slow demise of the old villages. In total 1.3 million people were forced to leave their homes to make way for the dam and the 360-mile reservoir. On my final trip in late 2003, the water had flooded much of the reservoir; the edges of the Yangtze were transformed. In 2004, Stanford University Press published Yangtze Remembered: The River Beneath the Lake.
Soon I was engaged in following another historic event. Between 2005-2006, I made three trips to the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. Most photographers went to New Orleans but I traveled to Mississippi and gained access to interiors, photographing the strange juxtapositions of elegance and storm debris inside of flooded homes, churches and hotels. This disturbing body of work is titled Meditations on an Altered World.
The urge to photograph pulls me into an astonishing environments. In my current photographs of Lake Erie, an undercurrent of concern permeates the images of coal-burning power plants, refineries and immense industrial complexes that encircle the lake. Yet on a crisp spring day, ducks shake off the cold water, and green leaves emerge from branches of trees, After a long winter, joy is palpable. In these images, fact and emotion knit themselves together in a complex mosaic that examines the web of our lives on one of the world's great lakes.
I grew up in Appleton--a medium-sized conservative city in Wisconsin on the edge of the Fox River. I am the middle child of three daughters. My parents both grew up on farms in Nebraska and lived through the Depression of the 30's. They met at the university. My mother was creative and liked to push the constrictions of conventionality. My dad was a self-made man who survived a rocky childhood. He put himself through college, majoring in mechanical engineering. As children, we always had some creative project spread out on the dining room table. No coloring books for us! We played with homemade play dough, blocks, and learned to lash leather wallets. I sometimes helped my dad in the shop, learning to hammer and saw.
My mother was an amateur watercolor painter and she pulled me along on her excursions to paint nature. She also loved photography and took pictures of strange abstract designs in nature that no one else noticed. My dad had spent his entire childhood working, so he was determined to have as much fun as possible as an adult. Whenever he was free, the family was out in nature. We went canoeing and camping in spring, summer, and fall and skiing in the winter.
After graduating from high school, I chose to go to Antioch College (Ohio) because of its work-study program. I spent my 3rd year of college in Japan and bought a high quality 35mm camera on my first day in Tokyo. During the winter semester, I worked at home for mentally disadvantaged children’s near Kyoto. The staff nurtured the creative talents of the children.The gardens, temples and farmyards of Japan became my aesthetic teachers. Japan’s influence is evident in all my work!
In 1970, I graduated from Antioch and two years later got a Masters from the University of Michigan. Soon after I graduated, my beloved mother developed breast cancer. I was teaching 4th grade while she was gradually dying. With her death, I realized that my own life was finite. I quit teaching and decided to pursue a career in photography.
In 1978, I married Steven Nissen who I’d met in anti-war protests about Vietnam. He had just finished medical school, and we went to California for his residency. Thanks to Ansel Adams, California had become a mecca for large-format photography. I purchased a 4" X 5” view camera, learned the ‘zone' system, and set up a home darkroom. My first coherent body of work tried to capture illusions in the western desert.
When we moved to Lexington, Kentucky three years later, the lush landscape did not appeal to me. Nearby, I discovered the beautiful Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill. I soon immersed myself in shooting interiors and still lifes. I watched the sun move through the buildings, and sometimes hung objects from the Shaker pegs to photograph the shadows and highlights cast on the white walls. I traveled to thirteen villages. In 1985, Knopf published my first book titled Inner Light: the Shaker Legacy.
My next project brought me back to rural Japan. During four years, I flew back and forth to Japan five times, exploring the rural areas from north to south. With the help of my Japanese family and friends, I wrote my own text to accompany the photographs. In 1992 the Smithsonian Institution Press published Rural Japan: Radiance of the Ordinary.
In 1992 we moved to Cleveland, Ohio, and I began what would become a five-year project on interiors and still lifes in Italy. Again I focused on out-of-the-way places and gained access to historical homes through introductions. Many of the objects were mysterious and the architecture varied from simplicity of ancient sites to ornate Baroque homes. My third book, Italy: In the Shadow of Time, was released by Rizzoli in 1998.
As the science on global warming became more definitive, I became engaged with environmental issues. In 2000, I discovered the Yangtze River and the Three Gorges Dam. When I first saw the Three Gorges, few modern conveniences were available to the villagers, so people's lives still resembled the lives of their ancestors. Yet everyone knew that the dam would change life forever. On seven trips over 2.5 years I watched the slow demise of the old villages. In total 1.3 million people were forced to leave their homes to make way for the dam and the 360-mile reservoir. On my final trip in late 2003, the water had flooded much of the reservoir; the edges of the Yangtze were transformed. In 2004, Stanford University Press published Yangtze Remembered: The River Beneath the Lake.
Soon I was engaged in following another historic event. Between 2005-2006, I made three trips to the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. Most photographers went to New Orleans but I traveled to Mississippi and gained access to interiors, photographing the strange juxtapositions of elegance and storm debris inside of flooded homes, churches and hotels. This disturbing body of work is titled Meditations on an Altered World.
The urge to photograph pulls me into an astonishing environments. In my current photographs of Lake Erie, an undercurrent of concern permeates the images of coal-burning power plants, refineries and immense industrial complexes that encircle the lake. Yet on a crisp spring day, ducks shake off the cold water, and green leaves emerge from branches of trees, After a long winter, joy is palpable. In these images, fact and emotion knit themselves together in a complex mosaic that examines the web of our lives on one of the world's great lakes.