JESSICA LANGE (b. 1949 in Cloquet, Minnesota) was initially drawn to photography as a medium to document her loved ones. She has since expanded her practice to encompass a broader perspective. Shooting close to home and in distant lands, the images are unmistakably cinematic and intimate--ranging from a couple lounging on the grass, a close up of a bear pawing at his cage, a performer and her dog in a Mexican circus, to the silhouette of a man facing the sea. Light and the passing drama of everyday experience seem to be the true substances in her work. Her photographs capture the subtleties and solitude of everyday moments printed in exquisite black and white.
Jessica Lange has always had a connection to photography. In 1967, she was awarded a scholarship to study photography at the University of Minnesota. But feeling unsettled, she left for Paris in the middle of her first semester of her education. In France, Lange found herself surrounded by artists and photographers, among them Robert Frank and Danny Lyon. At the time, she self-consciously felt that she didn’t have the same drive or passion for the medium as her peers. She only reconnected with her passion in the early 1990’s when she received a Leica camera as a gift, from then-partner Sam Shepard. She has been shooting pictures ever since.
In 2008, powerHouse Books released her first monograph, 50 Photographs by Jessica Lange with an introduction by Patti Smith. This publication was followed by In Mexico, published by Editorial RM in collaboration with ROSEGALLERY and Howard Greenberg Gallery, NY. Still upholding a rich, fulfilling, and ongoing acting and stage career the artist has indeed found a way to give her audiences an alternate art form in which to explore her vision.