Jerry Uelsmann

Untitled (Boat and Moon) by Jerry Uelsmann, 1982, Honolulu Museum of Art

Uelsmann was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1934. While attending public schools, at the age of fourteen, he became interested in photography. He believed that through photography he could exist outside of himself, to live in a world captured through the lens. Despite poor grades, he managed to land a few jobs, primarily photographs of models. Eventually, Uelsmann went on to earn a BA from the Rochester Institute of Technology and M.S. and M.F.A. degrees from Indiana University; he was inspired and influenced by teachers Minor White, Ralph Hattersley, and Henry Holmes Smith. Invited by Van Deren Coke, he taught photography at the University of Florida from 1960. He was a founding member of and elected to Board of Directors of, the National Society for Photographic Education. In 1967, Uelsmann had his first solo exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art which opened doors for his photography career.[1]

Uelsmann produces composite photographs with multiple negatives and extensive darkroom work. He uses up to a dozen enlargers at a time to produce his final images and has a large archive of negatives that he has shot over the years. Uelsmann does not carry multiple attachments, but only one camera, "Most photographers carry many cameras with multiple attachments. Most photographers have one enlarger. I have half a dozen." When beginning to create one of his photomontages, he has a strong intuitive sense of what he's looking for, some strategy for how to find it, and an understanding that mistakes are inevitable and are part of the creative process. His process begins after a day of shooting. He returns to his workstation in his home and covers a large drafting table with hundreds of proof sheets. He folds and overlaps various contact prints, explores the visual possibilities, then brings the options into his darkroom. He then sets his selected pieces into the large number of enlargers that he owns in his darkroom, and moves the photo paper progressively down the line, building up an image.[2] The negatives that Uelsmann uses are known to reappear within his work, acting as a focal point in one work, and background as another. Similar in technique to Rejlander, Uelsmann is a champion of the idea that the final image need not be tied to a single negative, and may be composed of many. During the mid-twentieth century, when photography was still being defined, Uelsmann didn't care about the boundaries given by the Photo Secessionists or other realists at the time, he simply wished to share with the viewer the images from his imagination and saw photomontage as the means by which to do so. Unlike Rejlander, though, he does not seek to create narratives, but rather "allegorical surrealist imagery of the unfathomable". Uelsmann subsists on grants and his teaching salary, rather than commercial work.

Uelsmann's interpretations of landscape elements, reworked, tweaked, and recontextualized, force the viewer to actively interact with his subjects.[3] Continually in his photographs the viewer is confronted with entrances, whether they be gates, windows, trapdoors or ordinary doors. Usually, the entrances are shut, but even when they are not, the viewer must imagine what is inside. This is an example of the viewer having to actively interact with the photo they are forced to think more deeply and critically about their own interpretation. In Uelsmann's art there are many right answers - and discovering them is a process that involves both the artist and the viewer. Untitled (Boat and Moon) demonstrates his ability to seamlessly blend multiple photographs into one image that appears to reinvent reality.[4]

Despite his works' affinity with digital techniques, Uelsmann continues to use traditional equipment. "I am sympathetic to the current digital revolution and excited by the visual options created by the computer. However, I feel my creative process remains intrinsically linked to the alchemy of the darkroom."[5] Today Uelsmann is retired from teaching and lives in Gainesville, Florida. In 2016, he divorced his third wife, Maggie Taylor.[6] He has one son, Andrew. Uelsmann still produces photos, sometimes creating more than a hundred in a single year. Out of these images, he likes to select the ten he likes the most, which is not an easy process.[5]

His photographs can be seen in the opening credits of the television series The Outer Limits (1995), and the illustrated edition of Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot. In addition, his artwork appears on the cover of Dream Theater's 2003 album Train of Thought, and Bon Jovi's 2016 album This House Is Not for Sale.

• 1967–1970 – Receives Guggenheim Fellowship. Conducts workshops and delivers lectures throughout the United States at major universities and art institutions. Promoted to Professor of Art, University of Florida. Cited for outstanding contributions to photography by the American Society of Magazine Photographers. Portfolio of work presented in major U.S. and European publications. The first retrospective exhibition, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Complete issue of Aperture (15:4) devoted to his work, with an essay by Peter C. Bunnell.
• 1971–1973 – Invited to deliver fourth Bertram Cox Memorial Lecture, entitled "Some Humanistic Considerations of Photography," at the Royal Public Society, London. Continues to lecture and give workshops throughout the United States and Europe. Receives National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Limited-edition portfolio of photographs issued by the Witkin Gallery, New York. Made Fellow of Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain.
• 1974–1977 – Appointed Graduate Research Professor, University of Florida. Receives Certificate of Merit from the Society of Publication Designers and Certificate of Excellence from American Institute of Graphic Arts, both for contributions to The New York Times. Publication of the first monograph on his work, Silver Meditations, Introduction by Peter C. Bunned.
• 1978–1981 – Receives a Bronze Medal at 19th Zagreb Salon, International Exhibition of Photography held in Yugoslavia. Honored as Visiting Professor, Nihon University, College of Art, Tokyo. Named one of top ten most collected photographers, preceded only by Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Walker Evans, and Lewis Hine, in a report by American Photographer.
• 1982 – Jerry N. Uelsmann: Twenty-Five Years: a Retrospective is published.
• 1985 – Uelsmann publishes Process and Perception, where he uncovers his creative process from negative, to print.

• 1967–1970. One-man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
• 1971–1973. Participates as one of several featured artists at fourth Rencontres Internationales de la photographie d'Arles, France.
• 1974–1977. Work included in international exhibitions at more than a half-dozen commercial galleries and at an equal number of major museums and art centers, including a 225-print retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
• 1978–1981. Included in major national and international exhibitions, including Mirrors and Windows (Museum of Modern Art, New York) and group shows in the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, and Japan.

Uelsmann received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967 and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1972. He is a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, a founding member of The Society of Photographic Education, and a former trustee of the Friends of Photography. He was inducted into the Florida Artist Hall of Fame in 1994.

Uelsmann's work has been exhibited in over 100 individual shows across the United States and abroad over the past forty years. It is included in the permanent collections of, among others:[7][8]

• Bibliothèque nationale, Paris
• Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona
• Chicago Art Institute
• George Eastman Museum
• Honolulu Museum of Art
• Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Moderna Museet, Stockholm
• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston
• Museum of Modern Art, New York
• Museum of Photography, Seoul
• National Gallery of Australia
• National Gallery of Canada
• National Galleries of Scotland
• National Museum of American Art, Washington
• National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto
• Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art in Gainesville
• Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography
• Victoria and Albert Museum, London

• Moth and Bonelight. 21st Editions, South Dennis MA, 2004.
• Uelsmann: Yosemite. University of Florida Press, Florida, 1996.
• An Aperture Monograph." Aperture, Inc., 1971.
• Other Realities. Bulfinch Press, New York,2005

• Bennett, Lennie (2006-02-19). "Focusing on a spiritual medium". St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved 2007-09-14.
• Hirsch, Robert. "Maker of Photographs: Jerry Uelsmann". PHOTOVISION Magazine. Retrieved 2007-09-14.
• Ames, John (1991). Uelsmann: Process and Perception. University of Florida Press.
• Coleman, A.D. (1992). Jerry Uelsmann: Photo Synthesis. University of Florida Press.
• Enyeart, James (1982). Jerry N. Uelsmann; Twenty-Five Years: A Retrospective. Little, Brown and Company.
• Garner, Gretchen (2003). Disappearing Act. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Uelsmann, Jerry (1971). An Aperture Monograph. Aperture, Inc.
• Uelsmann, Jerry (1996). Uelsmann: Yosemite. University of Florida Press.

• Official website
• Masters of Photography: Jerry Uelsmann