Kristin Capp (born 1964) is an American photographer, author and educator. Capp's work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Her work is included in collections at the
Whitney Museum
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude ...
in New York,
the
Lyman Allyn Art Museum
The Lyman Allyn Art Museum is located in New London, Connecticut and was founded in 1926 by Lyman Allyn's daughter Harriet Upson Allyn. in Connecticut, the
International Center of Photography
The International Center of Photography (ICP), at 79 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, consists of a museum for photography and visual culture and a school offering an array of educational courses and programming. ...
in New York and the
Harvard Art Museum
The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...
. She was one of sixty international artists selected for the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art in 2017.
Her work has appeared in the Bursa International Photofest in
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...
, as well as in Switzerland, France, Belgium, Germany and the United States.
She has published three books of photography: ''Hutterite: A World of Grace'' (1998), ''Americana'' (2000) and ''Brasil'' (2016).
Education
Kristin Capp was born in
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...
in 1964,
and grew up in
Seattle, Washington
Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...
.
Capp studied French and Russian at
McGill University
McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Universit ...
,
Quebec, Canada
Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirteen p ...
where she also enrolled in a photography class.
She then lived in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, studying analog photography and fine art printing.
In 2010, Capp received a
Fulbright Fellowship
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...
to work on a project title ''Picturing Communities: A Photographic Documentary of Non-Profits in Rural Namibia: The Application of Digital Photography in Art, Advertising and Personal Documentary.''
Work
In 1994, Capp photographed a
Hutterite
Hutterites (german: link=no, Hutterer), also called Hutterian Brethren (German: ), are a communal ethnoreligious group, ethnoreligious branch of Anabaptism, Anabaptists, who, like the Amish and Mennonites, trace their roots to the Radical Refor ...
community in eastern
Washington state
Washington (), officially the State of Washington, is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. Named for George Washington—the first U.S. president—the state was formed from the western part of the Washington ...
. Hutterites, like the
Amish
The Amish (; pdc, Amisch; german: link=no, Amische), formally the Old Order Amish, are a group of traditionalist Anabaptist Christian church fellowships with Swiss German and Alsatian origins. They are closely related to Mennonite churches ...
and
Mennonites
Mennonites are groups of Anabaptist Christian church communities of denominations. The name is derived from the founder of the movement, Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland. Through his writings about Reformed Christianity during the Radic ...
, are descended from sixteenth-century
Anabaptists
Anabaptism (from New Latin language, Neo-Latin , from the Greek language, Greek : 're-' and 'baptism', german: Täufer, earlier also )Since the middle of the 20th century, the German-speaking world no longer uses the term (translation: "Re- ...
, and retain many traditional agrarian ways. The book that resulted from this work, ''Hutterite: A World of Grace,'' explored this community's blend of old and new and was distinguished, as one reviewer put it, by its “tender and mysterious” square black-and-white photographs of young Hutterite women that evoke “the existence of an interior complexity within their beautifully plain exteriors.”
Over a period of eight years, Capp traveled frequently to
Brasil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area an ...
, where she shot 800 rolls of film on a
Rolleiflex
Rolleiflex is the name of a long-running and diverse line of high-end cameras originally made by the German company Franke & Heidecke, and later Rollei, Rollei-Werke.
History
The "Rolleiflex" name is most commonly used to refer to Rollei's pr ...
. As a result of this work, ''Brasil'' (2016), Capp eschewed the usual imagery of carnival and exoticized sexuality for black-and-white photographs of "street culture, landscape, architecture and the visual magic she encountered in
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...
." To complete the project, Capp crowd-funded to cover costs of layout, design and shipping. The project foregrounds Capp's aesthetic concerns with marginalized communities and the book was published by the Italian fine-art publisher Damiani.
In 2012, while on a Fulbright, Capp created a collection of photographs titled ''The Horse Latitudes.'' The exhibit, as a journalist put it, was "Inspired by nature, light and the complexity of the cultural, social and natural landscape" of different regions of Namibia.
Capp leads the New Media Design Course at the KCAC campus of the
College of the Arts (COTA) in
Windhoek, Namibia
Windhoek (, , ) is the capital and largest city of Namibia. It is located in central Namibia in the Khomas Highland plateau area, at around above sea level, almost exactly at the country's geographical centre. The population of Windhoek in 202 ...
.
Permanent collections
Capp's work is in the permanent collections of the following museums:
*
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The Bibliothèque nationale de France (, 'National Library of France'; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites known respectively as ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository ...
*
Brooklyn Museum of Art
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...
, New York
*
Center for Creative Photography
The Center for Creative Photography (CCP), established in 1975 and located on the University of Arizona's Tucson campus, is a research facility and archival repository containing the full archives of over sixty of the most famous American pho ...
,
Tucson, Arizona
, "(at the) base of the black ill
, nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town"
, image_map =
, mapsize = 260px
, map_caption = Interactive map ...
*
Harvard Art Museums
The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...
, Massachusetts
*
High Museum of Art
The High Museum of Art (colloquially the High) is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia (on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district), the High is 312,000 square feet (28, ...
, Atlanta, Georgia
*
International Center of Photography
The International Center of Photography (ICP), at 79 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, consists of a museum for photography and visual culture and a school offering an array of educational courses and programming. ...
, New York
*
Kunsthaus Zürich
The Kunsthaus Zürich is in terms of area the biggest art museum of Switzerland and houses one of the most important art collections in Switzerland, assembled over the years by the local art association called '. The collection spans from the Medi ...
, Switzerland
*
Maison européenne de la photographie
The Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP; European house of photography), located in the historic heart of Paris, is a center for contemporary photographic art opened in February 1996.
Location and activities
The Hotel Henault de Cantobre, ...
, Paris, France
*Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi,
Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...
*
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Build ...
, Texas
*
Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico
*
Museum Ludwig
Museum Ludwig, located in Cologne, Germany, houses a collection of modern art. It includes works from Pop Art, Abstract and Surrealism, and has one of the largest Picasso collections in Europe. It holds many works by Andy Warhol and Roy Lich ...
,
Cologne, Germany
Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 million ...
*
Norton Museum of Art
The Norton Museum of Art is an art museum located in West Palm Beach, Florida. Its collection includes over 8,200 works, with a concentration in European, American, and Chinese art as well as in contemporary art and photography. In 2003, it overt ...
, West Palm Beach, Florida
*
Muscarelle Museum of Art
The Muscarelle Museum of Art is a university museum affiliated with the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. While the Museum only dates to 1983, the university art collection has been in existence since its first gift – a portr ...
, William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia
*
Seattle Art Museum
The Seattle Art Museum (commonly known as SAM) is an art museum located in Seattle, Washington, United States. It operates three major facilities: its main museum in downtown Seattle; the Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAAM) in Volunteer Park on Cap ...
*Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery, Nashville, Tennessee
*
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), ...
, New York
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Capp, Kristin
1964 births
Living people
McGill University alumni
21st-century American photographers
20th-century American photographers
20th-century American women photographers
21st-century American women photographers