Jan Groover (April 24, 1943 – January 1, 2012) was an American
photographer. She received numerous one-person shows, including at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York, which holds some of her work in its permanent collection.
Her first large-format camera was bought immediately after winning a 1978 grant from the
National Endowment for the Arts.[3] Groover was noted for her use of emerging
color technologies. In 1979, she began to use
platinum prints for portraits and to transform everyday items into formal still lifes. In 1987, critic Andy Grundberg noted in The New York Times, "In 1978 an exhibition of her dramatic still-life photographs of objects in her kitchen sink caused a sensation. When one appeared on the cover of Artforum magazine, it was a signal that photography had arrived in the art world - complete with a marketplace to support it."[4]
Groover also used early 20th century camera technology, such as the
banquet camera, for elongated, horizontal presentations of otherwise pedestrian items. In a New York Times review of her work exhibited at Janet Borden Inc., New York, in 1997, critic Roberta Miller called Groover's work "beautiful and masterly in the extreme."[5]
Groover was the subject of a
short film by photographer
Tina Barney entitled (Jan Groover: Tilting at Space, 1994).
Groover and her husband, a painter and critic named Bruce Boice, left the United States and moved to
Montpon-Ménestérol, France in 1991. She had felt demoralized by what she felt was a turn toward deep political
conservatism in the United States. On this occasion, Groover purchased a larger camera and shifted her work from still-life photographs of everyday objects to photos of her surroundings in France, including landscapes, churches, and graveyards.[3]
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, 1983[citation needed]
Publications
New York: Neuberger Museum, State University of New York at Purchase, 1983.
Groover, Jan. Jan Groover: Photographs. New York: Museum of Modern Art.
Kismaric, Susan and Jan Groover. Jan Groover. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1987.
Groover, Jan. Pure Invention—The Tabletop Still Life. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1990.
Groover, Jan. Jan Groover: Photographs. Boston: Little, Brown, 1993.
Franck, Tatyana, ed. Jan Groover, Photographer: Laboratory of Forms. Zurich: Scheidegger & Spiess; Lausanne: Musée de l’Elysée, 2019. Accompanies the related exhibition at
Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, September 18, 2019 – January 5, 2020.[7]
Time and Information 1975 (group exhibition)[citation needed]
Three on Technology: Photographs by Robert Cumming, Lee Friedlander, and Jan Grover, May 7 – June 26, 1988, MIT, Boston, MA;[citation needed] May 7 – June 26, 1989 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA[8]
Jan Groover : Recent Still Life Photography, Nancy Drysdale Gallery, N.W Washington D.C., April 28 – May 29, 1993[9]