Jo Ann Callis

2023 Honoree / Achievement in Fine Art

Jo Ann Callis is an American photographer known for her intriguing and thought-provoking photographic works. Born in 1940 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Callis has made significant contributions to the field of fine art photography, particularly in the realm of staged and constructed images. Her photographs often explore themes of domesticity, desire, intimacy, and the human body.

Callis initially gained recognition in the 1970s for her work as part of the “fabricated photography” movement, which challenged traditional notions of photography as a purely objective medium. She began creating highly staged and meticulously composed images that incorporated elements of performance, sculpture, and installation. Callis would construct intimate and surreal tableaus using props, models, and household objects, transforming ordinary scenes into something extraordinary.

Jo Ann Callis enrolled at UCLA in 1970 where she began taking classes with Robert Heinecken, among other prominent artists. She started teaching at CalArts in 1976 and remains a faculty member of the School of Art’s Program in Photography and Media.

She continues to photograph, experiment, fabricate, sculpt, and paint, and her work has been widely exhibited in such venues as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hammer Museum Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2009 a retrospective of her work, Woman Twirling, was presented by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Callis has received numerous awards, grants and fellowships, including three NEA Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship and was the 2019 Photo LA Honoree.

Her work is part of major public and private collections such as the National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, Washington D.C.; the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Centre Pompidou, Paris; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Tate Modern, London and Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Website: joanncallis.com

Photo by Elizabeth Prager