Jessica Lange
2012 Honoree / Double Exposure Award
Lange has always been drawn to photographs, “I remember going through boxes of photographs, even as a child, and being intrigued by them – that ability to capture a fleeting instant on film as a record of time and space.” In 1967, Lange won a scholarship to study photography at the University of Minnesota. However, feeling dissatisfied, she left for Paris in the middle of her first semester.
There she spent time with artists and photographers, among them Robert Frank and Danny Lyons, but felt that she didn’t have the same drive or passion for the medium at the time as her peers did. Lange only rediscovered her passion in the early 90’s when she received a Leica as a gift. She has been taking pictures ever since.
What began as a way to document her family grew into a document of 15 years of travel around the globe. From the Yucatan to Russia to Scandinavia; from Minnesota to Romania to Ethiopia, Lange’s images are both cinematic and traditional documentations of a time and place. Although her subjects range from the traditional American carnival to an isolated train track buried in snow, again and again, you have the feeling that “light” is the true subject of her pictures.
Beginning with the lead role in the 1976 remake of King Kong, Jessica Lange has had a rich film career that includes Bob Rafelson’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, Sydney Pollack’s Tootsie, Graeme Clifford’s Frances, Tony Richardson’s Blue Sky, and Julie Taymor’s Titus, among others. She has also earned acclaim for her stage work, including Broadway and West End productions of A Streetcar Named Desire, Long Day’s Journey into Night, and The Glass Menagerie. Lange was a recent Emmy award recipient for Grey Gardens, and her current project, American Horror Story: Asylum continues this year.