Andrea Modica (born 1960) is an American

photographer A photographer (the Greek language, Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties and types of photographe ...

and

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

of photography at

Drexel University Drexel University is a private research university with its main campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Drexel's undergraduate school was founded in 1891 by Anthony J. Drexel, a financier and philanthropist. Founded as Drexel Institute of Art, S ...

. She is known for portrait photography and for her use of

platinum print Platinum prints, also called ''platinotypes'', are photographic prints made by a monochrome photographic printing, printing process involving platinum. Platinum tones range from warm black, to reddish brown, to expanded mid-tone grays that are ...

ing, created using an 8"x10"

large format camera Large format refers to any imaging format of or larger. Large format is larger than "medium format", the or size of Hasselblad, Mamiya, Rollei, Kowa, and Pentax cameras (using 120- and 220-roll film), and much larger than the frame o ...

. Modica is the author of many monographs, including ''Treadwell'' (1996) and ''Barbara'' (2002).

Early life and education

Modica was born in Brooklyn, New York. She earned her BFA in Visual Arts and Art History from State University of New York College ( SUNY) at Purchase, Purchase, NY in 1982, and earned her MFA in Photography from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 1985.

Teaching

Modica taught photography at the

State University of New York The State University of New York (SUNY, , ) is a system of public colleges and universities in the State of New York. It is one of the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the United States. Led by c ...

– Oneonta for thirteen years, and has also taught at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

Parsons School of Design Parsons School of Design, known colloquially as Parsons, is a private art and design college located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhatt ...

, the State University of New York College at Purchase, and

Colorado College Colorado College is a private liberal arts college in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It was founded in 1874 by Thomas Nelson Haskell in his daughter's memory. The college enrolls approximately 2,000 undergraduates at its campus. The college offer ...

. She is currently a professor of photography at

Work

Modica's most known work is ''Treadwell''. From 1986 to 2001, she staged and photographed a young girl named Barbara and her family in upstate New York with an 8x10 view camera, following the family from farmhouse to farmhouse in and around the town of Treadwell, New York. Chronicle Books published the work in book form in 1996. She continued to photograph Barbara until her death in 2001 from childhood diabetes. The work from the later period of Barbara's life was published by

Nazraeli Press Nazraeli Press is a publisher of books of photography. It was founded in 1989, in Munich, Germany, by Chris Pichler and has been based in the USA since 1996. Nazraeli publishes roughly 30 new titles each year and has published over 400 with work ...

in 2004. Nazraeli Press also published Human Being, a series of 19th century human skulls that were unearthed at a mental hospital in Pueblo, Colorado. ''As We Wait'' is a collection of previously unpublished portraits, still lifes, landscapes, and horses curated by

Larry Fink Laurence Douglas Fink (born November 2, 1952) is an American billionaire businessman. He is the chairman and CEO of BlackRock, an American multinational investment management corporation. BlackRock is the largest money-management firm in the wor ...

in 2015 by Grafiche dell'Artiere , who also published January 1, portraits of Philadelphia Mummers in 2018. Even before starting the series ''Best Friends'', Modica had been photographing students at a high school in Connecticut, and she noticed that a friend was often present in the background of the photoshoots. She started photographing friends together in other high schools in Philadelphia and Modena, Italy. For ''Fountain'', Modica documented the Baker Family in Fountain, Colorado for nine years. The family runs a small slaughterhouse. She photographed the inner workings of the farm and the intimate family moments. ''Real Indians'' combines first-person narratives by 37 Native American people with black and white photographic portraits of each person by Modica. For ''Minor League'', Modica photographed in Oneonta, New York and the New York Yankees' spring-training camp in Florida for a project on young ballplayers in 1993. She photographed the young athletes' anxieties, focusing on the minor league players who were hoping to go up. Modica photographed and filmed horses in post-operative anesthetic states in Theatrum Equorum published by TIS books in 2022.

Collections

Modica's work is held in the following permanent collections: *

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

: 1 print (as of 1 July 2022) *

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

: 12 prints (as of 1 July 2022) *

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

: 3 prints (as of 1 July 2022) *

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...

, Washington, D.C.: 5 prints (as of 1 July 2022) *

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...

: 4 prints (as of 1 July 2022)

Awards

*1990: Fulbright-Hays Research Grant *1993: Guggenheim Arts Fellowship from the

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died on April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been ...

*2010

Anonymous Was A Woman Award The Anonymous Was A Woman Award is a grant program for women artists who are over 40 years of age, in part to counter sexism in the art world. It began in 1996 in direct response to the National Endowment for the Arts' decision to stop funding in ...

*201
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Award

Publications

* ''Minor League.'' Photographers at Work Series. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian. 1993. . * ''Treadwell.'' San Francisco: Chronicle. 1996. . With an introduction by Maria Morris Hambourg and an essay by

Annie Proulx Edna Ann Proulx (; born August 22, 1935) is an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. She has written most frequently as Annie Proulx but has also used the names E. Annie Proulx and E.A. Proulx. She won the PEN/Faulkner Award fo ...

. * ''Human Being.'' Portland: Nazraeli. 2001. . With a foreword by Modica and "Anthropological Descriptions" by J. Michael Hoffman. * ''Andrea Modica: At The Edge Of Fiction.'' Light Work. 2001. . *''Barbara.'' Portland: Nazraeli, 2002. . With a foreword by Modica. 2002 * ''Real Indians.'' New York: Melcher. 2003. . With an introduction by

Sherman Alexie Sherman Joseph Alexie Jr. (born October 7, 1966) is a Spokane- Coeur d'Alene-Native American novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, and filmmaker. His writings draw on his experiences as an Indigenous American with ancestry from se ...

. *''Fountain.'' Lunenburg, VT: Stinehour, 2008. With an afterword by Modica. * ''L'Amico del Cuore.'' Portland: Nazraeli, 2014. . * ''As We Wait.'' Italy: Grafiche dell'Artiere. 2015. . With an introduction by

. * January 1, Italy: Grafiche dell'Artiere, 2018. * Lentini, Kris Graves Projects, Queens, NY, 2019 * 2020, TIS books, Brooklyn, NY, 2020. * Theatrum Equorum, TIS books, Brooklyn, NY, 2022. ISBN 9781943146314

References

External links

AndreaModica.com