Janelle Lynch


Janelle Lynch is an American large format landscape photographer. She was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet 2019, the world's leading prize for photography.
In her 20-year career, Lynch has been creating long-term projects in the landscapes of the United States, Mexico, and Spain; focusing on themes of absence, transcendence, and life cycles. Her most recent series, Another Way of Looking at Love, explores the interconnection of all life forms, and supports a renewal of human relationships to each other and to the natural and spiritual worlds.
Lynch's work is held in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of the City of New York, The New York Public Library, Brooklyn Museum, George Eastman Museum, and New-York Historical Society, among others worldwide.

Education

In 1999, Lynch completed an MFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts where she studied with Joel Sternfeld and Stephen Shore. In 2003, she completed the Master Class in Photography, a one-on-one tutorial with Shore at Bard College. From 2015-2018, while photographing Another Way of Looking at Love, Lynch studied perceptual drawing and painting with Graham Nickson at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting & Sculpture.

Work

Lynch has three monographs published by Radius Books: Los Jardines de México ; AIGA award-winning Barcelona, which also features her writings; and Another Way of Looking at Love, which includes an essay by Darius Himes, International Head of Photographs, Christie's.
Los Jardines de México consists of four related projects, using the landscape of Mexico City and the countryside of Chiapas to explore aspects of life cycles. Three of these projects were realized while Lynch was living in Mexico City. In 2008, photography writer and independent curator Charlotte Cotton named Los Jardines de México a finalist for the Santa Fe Prize for Photography.Barcelona contains five related series that were realized between 2007 and 2011, when Lynch was living in Spain. Photographs were created along seminal waterways in Catalonia's history to explore what remains after loss, such as puddles, leaves, and litter. Barcelona also includes the artist's writings about her creative influences and nature. American Institute of Graphic Arts named Barcelona a recipient of their 50 Books/50 Covers Award in 2013. In 2013, jurors Charlotte Cotton and Diana Edkins named Lynch's Walls series a finalist for The Cord Prize. Also in 2013, Lynch was named the first Artist-in-Residence at the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY. The resulting project, Presence, was acquired by the museum and exhibited there in 2014.
Another Way of Looking at Love is a three-year project that is influenced by her recent immersion in drawing and painting from observation and from her interest in relational-cultural theory. In 2018, Radius Books published a monograph of the work that Lynch co-designed. Charlotte Cotton describes the book as being “…full of delicate hope.”
Lynch's practice has been supported by substantial 8×10 film grants from Kodak in 2007, 2008, and 2011. She writes about contemporary issues in photography, reviews books, and lectures widely. She was a 2012 to 2013 Fellow at The Writers’ Institute, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY. She teaches at the International Center of Photography.
Lynch's work has appeared in international publications including The Boston Globe, The Buffalo News, The Photo Review, Photo District News, photo-eye, L'Oeil de la Photographie, Photo-International, and La Vanguardia. She is a faculty member at the International Center of Photography and a frequent guest lecturer. She writes about photography for Afterimage, photo-eye, and The Photo Review.

Publications

Monographs

Lynch's work is held in the following public collections: