Garner, Gretchen 1939-

PERSONAL:

Born December 27, 1939, in Minneapolis, MN; daughter of Irving G. (a mechanical engineer) and Laura (a dancer and dance teacher; maiden name, Hoffoss) Grant; married William T. Garner, 1959 (divorced, 1975); married Steven L. Klindt, 1979 (divorced, 1987); children: (first marriage) Laura Garner Saale, Helen Garner Ackery. Ethnicity:"Scandinavian-American." Education: University of Chicago, B.A. (with honors), 1965; School of the Art Institute of Chicago, M.F.A., 1975.

ADDRESSES:

Home—1181 Haddon Rd., Columbus, OH 43209.E-mail—gretchengarner@sbcglobal.net

CAREER:

Writer and educator. St. Xavier College, Chicago, IL, began as instructor, became associate professor of art, 1974-85; Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI, began as assistant professor, became associate professor of communications, 1987-89; University of Connecticut, Storrs, professor of art, 1989-94, chair of art department, 1989-92; Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia, PA, academic dean, 1994-97.

WRITINGS:

Reclaiming Paradise: American Women Photograph the Land, Tweed Museum of Art, University of Minnesota (Duluth, MN), 1987.

Six Ideas in Photography: A Celebration of Photography's Sesquicentennial, Grand Rapids Art Museum (Grand Rapids, MI), 1989.

Disappearing Witness: Change in Twentieth-Century American Photography, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Gretchen Garner told CA: "I write about photography. Writing gives me an opportunity to organize my thinking in a way different from teaching. Writing and lecturing to general audiences also allow engagement with groups beyond college students. As a writer, I can follow interests at will and look into areas that are ignored or neglected in the existing literature. My motivations are to continue my own education and also to correct the record, or at least rethink it, when called for. These were the specific motives behind bothReclaiming Paradise: American Women Photograph the Land, andDisappearing Witness: Change in Twentieth-Century American Photography. In both works I questioned the conventional wisdom and refashioned it—in the first to insert women into the canon of American landscape photography and analyze their contributions, and in the second to trace some profound changes in photographic practice, changes that had never been analyzed thoroughly in book form."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Afterimage, January-February, 2004, Bruno Chalifour, review ofDisappearing Witness: Change in Twentieth-Century American Photography, p. 18.

History: Review of New Books, winter, 2004, Martha A. Sandweiss, review of Disappearing Witness, p. 47.

Library Journal, March 15, 2004, Kathleen Collins, review of Disappearing Witness, p. 70.