Tuscaloosa. — The 
The exhibition by the acclaimed innovator of the technique of photomontage features 58 photographs from the artist’s work produced from 2014 to 2017. These black-and-white photographs are inspired by Uelsmann’s friendship with European art history scholar, Dr. Moa Petersen, who is writing his biography.
Uelsmann’s photographic process has changed little in the years since his 1967 solo show at the Museum of Modern Art. By using multiple enlargers and masking and dodging techniques, he creates seamless composite negatives. “I try to create things that are authentically who I am. I’m inner-directed. I invent a reality that’s more meaningful to me — and hopefully to others — than the world we see with our eyes.” In 1967, Uelsmann said, “It is my conviction that the darkroom is capable of being, in the truest sense, a visual research lab; a place for discovery, observation and meditation.”
Born in Detroit in 1934, Jerry Uelsmann received his BFA degree at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1957 and his MS and MFA at Indiana University in 1960. He began teaching photography at the University of Florida in Gainesville in 1960 and became a graduate research professor of art at the university in 1974 until his retirement in 1997. He lives in Gainesville, Florida.
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. Uelsmann’s work has been exhibited in more than 100 solo shows in the United States and abroad. His photographs are in the permanent collections of many museums worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Chicago Art Institute, the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Bibliotheque National in Paris, the National Museum of American Art in Washington, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the National Gallery of Canada, the National Gallery of Australia, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the National Galleries of Scotland, the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto.
This exhibition is organized by the University Gallery at the University of Florida, curated by Amy R. Vigilante and made possible by the Gary R. Libby Charitable Trust and Hector Puig.
Image credit: Jerry Uelsmann, The Somnambulist’s Dream, 2014, gelatin silver print, 30 x 24 inches.
The Sarah Moody Gallery of Art is supported by The University of Alabama College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Art and Art History. For further information, contact the gallery at 348-1891 or go to our website: https://art.ua.edu/gallery/smga/.
Garland Hall is a five-minute walk from the Campus Drive Parking Deck and Bus Hub on Hackberry Lane. Information about visitor parking is available here: http://bamaparking.ua.edu/visitor-information/.
For more information about The University of Alabama’s programs in studio art and art history, go here: https://art.ua.edu/academics/.