PRATT: Taking Liberties
Taking Liberties
GRETA PRATT
November 2 - December 22, 2012
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Just in time for the 2012 presidential election as well as the release of Steven Spielberg’s Richmond-filmed “Lincoln,” Candela Books + Gallery presents Taking Liberties, a selection of photographs from Virginia photographer Greta Pratt. The exhibition draws on several series of her work including “Using History,” her portraits of The Association of Lincoln Presenters, called “Nineteen Lincolns,” “The Wavers,” which document Liberty Tax Service employees, and the most recent “Trail Maids.
Pratt is assistant professor of photography at Old Dominion University, author of two esteemed books of photographs, and a past Pulitzer Prize nominee. Her work is housed in major public and private collections including Smithsonian American Art Museum and The Museum of Contemporary Photography, and has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times and American Art.
Pratt’s photographs, while on the surface offering innocuous gloss and humor, ultimately ask meaningful questions about American culture, particularly the construction and celebration of our national history. In Pratt’s own words,
“…Everyone is trying to connect to the past but the past is always fiction. How history is told reveals much more about the people and time period that are telling it than about history itself.”
Taking Liberties seeks both to give an honorable survey of Pratt’s body of photographic work, as well as stimulate timely discussion about American history and politics in the making.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Greta Pratt is an artist, educator, and author whose work explores ideas surrounding American myth, place, and identity. Pratt is the author of four books, In Search of the Corn Queen (Smithsonian National Museum of American Art, 1995), Using History (Steidl, 2005), The Wavers (Blue Sky Books, 2014), and Nineteen Lincolns (Peanut Press, 2020). Her work has been exhibited internationally and nationally at Smithsonian American Art Museum, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, The Park Avenue Armory, Beirut Art Center, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, and Mattress Factory Museum, among others. Public collections include of Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Museum of Fine Art, Houston, Chrysler Museum, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Pratt was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize along and the Anonymous was a Woman award, also, she was a recipient of a New Jersey State Artist Fellowship. Her photographs have been featured in Art in America, National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and Harpers, along with numerous books and catalogs.
