Jessica Eaton (born 1977) is a Canadian photographer living in

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

, Quebec.

Life

Eaton was born in 1977 in

Regina, Saskatchewan Regina () is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The city is the second-largest in the province, after Saskatoon, and is a commercial centre for southern Saskatchewan. As of the 2021 C ...

, Canada, and she received a BFA in photography from the

Emily Carr Institute Emily Carr University of Art + Design (abbreviated as ECU) is a public art university located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The university's campus is located within the Great Northern Way Campus in Strathcona. The university is a co-e ...

. Her solo exhibitions include Wild Permutations at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland (USA), and Ad Infinitum at The Photographers' Gallery in London (UK). Eaton has been featured in multiple group exhibitions. Including: Under Construction (Netherlands), Color Acting (USA), Photography is Magic (South Korea). In 2016, Eaton was nominated for the Sobey Art Award. She was featured in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Art in America, ArtNews (Cover), and The Guardian. Eaton was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, identifying her as one of the most important current Canadian photographers.

Work

Eaton's photographs focus mostly on some of the basic elements of photography: light, color, and exposure. By manipulating these different aspects in her photos, Eaton is able to explore the different possibilities within photography. After moving from

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

and then to

, Eaton produced a career changing series of photos, "Cubes for Albers and LeWitt", for a show sponsored by

Red Bull Red Bull is a brand of energy drinks of Austria, Austrian company Red Bull GmbH. With 38% market share, it is the most popular energy drink brand as of 2019. Since its launch in 1987, more than 100 billion cans of Red Bull have been sold worldwid ...

. The series of images are a tribute to artists

Josef Albers Josef Albers (; ; March 19, 1888March 25, 1976) was a German-born artist and educator. The first living artist to be given a solo show at MoMA and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he taught at the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College, ...

and

Sol LeWitt Solomon "Sol" LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism. LeWitt came to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" (a term he pref ...

, taking inspiration from their minimalist and abstract style. Eaton exploits the camera, as she calls it, by continuously taking multiple shots of a cube painted in different colors without winding the exposure. Unlike painting, the added layers of shots on the same piece of film brightens the colors in the pictures. In some works she shoots only grey cubes and uses different color filters over the lens to expose the film. Her photographs have appeared in publications such as ''

Hunter and Cook ''Hunter and Cook'' was a Toronto-based art and culture magazine. It was founded in 2008, and published three times a year until 2011, for 10 issues total. Visual artists Tony Romano and Jay Isaac were the publishers. The magazine included in-dep ...

'', ''BlackFlash'', ''Pyramid Power'' and ''Lay Flat 02: Meta''. One of her photographs was chosen for the cover of the March 2011 issue of ''

ARTnews ''ARTnews'' is an American visual-arts magazine, based in New York City. It covers art from ancient to contemporary times. ARTnews is the oldest and most widely distributed art magazine in the world. It has a readership of 180,000 in 124 countri ...

''. Her work has been included in a number of group and solo exhibitions in Canada and the United States, as well as in

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

, Amsterdam, and London.

Awards

In 2011, Eaton received the Bright Spark Award from the Magenta Foundation. She was awarded the prize for photography at the Hyères International Festival of Fashion and Photography in 2012. In 2019, Eaton was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of photography.

Collections

Eaton's work is included in the permanent collections of: * Museum of Contemporary Art, Montreal *

National Gallery of Canada The National Gallery of Canada (french: Musée des beaux-arts du Canada), located in the capital city of Ottawa, Ontario, is Canada's national art museum. The museum's building takes up , with of space used for exhibiting art. It is one of the l ...

References

External links

*
Jessica Eaton – M+B website feature
1977 births Living people Canadian women photographers Emily Carr University of Art and Design alumni Artists from Montreal Artists from Regina, Saskatchewan 21st-century Canadian photographers 21st-century women photographers {{Canada-photographer-stub