The Photographs of Jane Reece: Will and Energy
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: CONTACT: Susan Talbot-Stanaway, Director, December 9, 2009 phone 740-452-0741 or susan@zanesvillemuseumofart.org.
ZANESVILLE MUSEUM OF ART OPENS EXHIBITION OF WORKS BY PIONEERING OHIO PHOTOGRAPHER
On Saturday, December 12, the Zanesville Museum of Art will open The Photographs of Jane Reece: Will and Energy. Featuring 65 original Reece images, the exhibition catalogues the work of one of the first women to achieve national prominence in the art of photography. A native Ohioan, Reece has gained recognition as one of the most significant American portraitists of the 20th century. Her portraits, landscapes, and still lifes demonstrate the original, richness, and depth that photographs can achieve.
Reece is recorded as being born in a log cabin near West Jefferson, Ohio, in 1868. Before 1882, the family had moved to Zanesville. In 1893, her brother Lawson Bradley is listed in the Zanesville city directory as a photographer. In 1896 Reece took a job with the well-known Zanesville portrait photographer George K. Muntz and his partner Pack. Muntz and Pack closed in 1901 or 1902, and Jane Reece had her own studio at 315 Main Street. At this time, however, Reece was still more interested in painting as her medium.
But Reece developed a serious medical problem and was sent to North Carolina to recover. She could not tolerate the turpentine fumes of painting in oils. On the advice of a nurse, she turned to photography. In 1904, she moved to the very prosperous community of Dayton, OH, and set up a studio she called, “The Rembrandt.” In Dayton, Reece did portraits of everyone in society. Her fame spread, and within a few years, she was traveling extensively around the nation and to Europe, shooting the likes of photographic master Edward Weston, Count Ilya Tolstoy, Vachel Lindsay, Robert Frost, and Helen Keller. She was the first woman portraitist admitted to the Photographer’s Association of America and was presented with that organization’s top award in 1907. During her career Reece participated in more than 125 national and international photography exhibitions, receiving many awards.
Reece’s images and methods were always highly personal, expressive, and experimental. Portrait poses were carefully and elaborately composed; every portrait was “an artistic arrangement.” These images are characteristic of a photographic style of the time called “Pictorialism.” Alfred Stieglitz was one of its most famous proponents. Pictorialism lost favor in the 1930s, and Reese decreased vision and hearing interfered with her art. She ceased to work with her cameras in the 1940s and died in 1961.
Many of the photographs in the exhibition were donated in 1954 by the Dayton Art Institute. Dayton received many photographs and Reece’s personal archives as a gift from the photographer.
The exhibition continues through February 6, 2010. Films and lectures on photography are scheduled for January. Please consult www.zanesvillemuseumofart.org for more information.
The Zanesville Museum of Art is located at 620 Military Road, Zanesville, OH 43701. Phone: (740) 452-0741; FAX (740) 452-0797. On the web, www.zanesvillemuseumofart.org. Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday 10 – 5; Thursday, 10 – 8:30; Saturday 9 - 5. Closed Sundays and Mondays.