Jane Evelyn Atwood


Jane Evelyn Atwood is an American photographer born in New York City, who has been living in Paris since 1971. Working primarily with documentary photography, Atwood typically follows groups of people or individuals, focusing mostly on people who are on the fringes of society. Atwood has had ten books of her work published, and received the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography, the Grand Prix Paris Match for Photojournalism, the Oskar Barnack Award, the Alfred Eisenstadt Award and the Hasselblad Foundation Grant twice.

Career

Atwood acquired her first camera in 1975, with which she began to photograph a group of prostitutes in Paris. In 1980, she obtained a grant from the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund for a project she had started about blind children. Until then, she had never published a photograph.

"Too Much Time: Women in Prison"

In 1989, Atwood photographed women in prison for a ten-year-long photography study. She became inspired to accomplish this project after French prisons first refused her access to the men's quarters because she was a woman. She obtained access to more than 40 prisons, including the toughest prisons in Eastern and Western Europe and in the United States, as well as death row.
Too Much Time: Women in Prison is a ten-year photographic documentary study about women's experiences in prison and provides the readers with an exclusive insight on the treatment of inmates in a collection of 150 black and white photographs she took while meeting with prisoners who had agreed to be published in her book. Written between the pictures are the women's stories, presented in Tony Parker's lengthy interview style.

"Rue des Lombards" and Other Works

Other themes of Atwood's works include prostitutes in Paris, blind children, Darfur, and Haiti. Atwood also did a four-year study of destruction caused by landmines in Cambodia, Angola, Kosovo, Mozambique, and Afghanistan.
In addition, Atwood participated in neo-media projects organized by the French photography institution 24h.com.
In 2008, Atwood presented her work at the Rencontres d'Arles festival in France.

Publications