Susan Lipper (born 1953) is an American photographer, based in New York City. ^{[1] [2]} Her books include Grapevine (1994), for which she is best known, Trip (2000) and Domesticated Land (2018). ^[3] Lipper has said that all of her work is "subjective documentary"; ^[4] the critic Gerry Badger has said many describe it as "ominous". ^[3]

Lipper had a solo exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery, London in 1994 ^[5] and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2015. ^[6] Her work is held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art ^[1] and New York Public Library in New York City, ^[7] Minneapolis Institute of Art, ^[8] Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, ^[9] and the National Portrait Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museum in London. ^{[10] [11]}

Early life and education

Lipper was born and raised in New York City. She studied English Romantic poetry in college with a concentration on W. B. Yeats. ^[12] She received an MFA in photography from Yale University in 1983. ^[13]

Life and work

Lipper uses a medium format camera, a Hasselblad, sometimes with attached flash. ^{[14] [15]}

Lipper's first book, Innocence & the Birth of Jealousy (1974), combines photography and poetry. According to David Solo writing in The PhotoBook Review, the book "offers a single, tightly integrated meditation on narcissism and its effects on relationships." Lipper appears in a set of dance-like poses, photographed by Penny Slinger, while Lipper was studying English literature in London. "When Lipper reviewed the contact sheets, the idea of the sequence/story emerged, and she wrote the accompanying narrative poem". The book was published by Martin Booth under his Omphalos imprint. ^[16]

After returning to the United States, Lipper developed her more recognized style, as seen in the book trilogy Grapevine (1994), Trip (2004), and Domesticated Land (2018). ^[16]

For about 20 years she has been visiting and photographing a tiny community in Grapevine Hollow in the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia, eastern United States. ^{[4] [17]} The photographs she made there between 1988 and 1994, in collaboration with her subjects the residents, became Grapevine. ^{[4] [3]} The critic Gerry Badger has written that "Community, family, and gender relationships seem to be at the core of her investigation." ^[3] Lipper's collaborative approach distinguishes Grapevine from social documentary photography; ^[3] she describes it as "subjective documentary" and that "we were creating fictional images together [. . .] they knew the narratives I was playing around with as well as I did." ^[4] Izabela Radwanska Zhang wrote in the British Journal of Photography that it "challenges our belief in images labelled 'photojournalism', by interweaving a theatrical element. Lipper asked her models to assume characters that could essentially be them in the images; the result is a slippery, mysterious work." ^[18]

Trip, made between 1993 and 1999, paired photographs of urban landscapes and interiors with writing by Frederick Barthelme. ^{[3] [19] [20]} Domesticated Land was made between 2012 and 2016 in the California desert. ^{[2] [19]}

Publications

Books of work by Lipper

• Innocence & the Birth of Jealousy. Rushden, UK: Omphalos, 1974. ^[16]
• Grapevine: Photographs by Susan Lipper. Manchester, UK: Cornerhouse, 1994. ISBN  0948797134.
  • Limited edition. New York: powerHouse, 1997. ISBN  1576870235.
• Trip. Photographs by Lipper with accompanying short texts by Frederick Barthelme.
  • Stockport, UK: Dewi Lewis, 2000. ISBN  1899235523.
  • Brooklyn, New York: powerHouse, 2000. ISBN  1576870510.
• Bed and Breakfast. Country life 4. Maidstone, UK: Photoworks, 2000. ISBN  9780951742730. Edited by Val Williams. With an essay by David Chandler. Edition of 1000 copies.
• Domesticated Land. London: Mack, 2018. ISBN  9781912339037.

Books with contributions by Lipper

• How We Are: Photographing Britain from the 1840s to the Present. Edited by Val Williams and Susan Bright. London: Tate, 2007. ISBN  978-1-85437-714-2.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

• Grapevine Hollow, The Photographers' Gallery, London, 1994 ^[5]

Exhibitions with one other

• Arnolfini, Bristol, UK, 1997. With Michael B. Platt. ^[21]

Group exhibitions

• Who's Looking at the Family, Barbican Centre, London, May–September 1994 ^[22]

Awards

• 2015: Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation ^[6]

Collections

Lipper's work is held in the following permanent collections:

• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City: 2 prints (as of 11 April 2023) ^[1]
• Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota: 1 print (as of 30 August 2021) ^[8]
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles: 5 prints (as of 11 April 2023) ^[9]
• National Portrait Gallery, London: 4 prints ^[11]
• New York Public Library, New York City ^[7]
• Victoria and Albert Museum, London: 7 prints (as of 30 August 2021) ^[10]

References

External links

• Official website
• "ICP Lecture Series 2010: Susan Lipper" (video) – Lipper describes her career