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The South Dakota Art Museum is pleased to present a photography exhibition entitled, “Jerry Uelsmann: Photography” on exhibit from November 23, 2004 to March 13, 2005.

The exhibit will showcase selected photographs produced throughout Uelsmann’s career. All of Uelsmann’s work is created in a darkroom. While claiming that his photos could be rendered on a computer, he finds a greater joy watching the print come to life in the developer. He says that producing his work in a darkroom creates a much more spiritual experience.

Commenting on his work, Uelsmann said, “People believe photographs. From childhood we are taught to believe them. So when you have a photograph like mine, with all the fidelity of a traditional image, yet at the same time presenting another kind of realism – a kind of magic realism – then it leads you to question what you believe. It makes you think.”

Through his work, Uelsmann takes his subjects and transforms them to depict an altered reality.

In an Interview, Uelsmann said, “I would like the synthesized and reconstructed images I create to challenge the inherent believability of the photograph. All the information is there, and the mystery remains.”

Born in Detroit in 1934, Uelsmann received his B.F.A. degree at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1957. He then received his M.S. and M.F.A. at Indiana University in 1960. He began teaching photography at the University of Florida, Gainesville in 1960 and became a graduate Research Professor of Art at the university in 1974. Uelsmann is now retired from teaching and remains in Gainesville, Florida.

Uelsmann is a founding member of The Society of Photographic Education, a former trustee of the Friends of Photography and a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967 and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1972. Uelsmann’s photos have been shown in more than 100 individual exhibits nationally and internationally over the last thirty years. Several monographs on his work have been published, and his work is in permanent collections throughout the world.

Museum hours are M-F 10 am – 5 pm, Sat. 10 am – 4 pm and Sun. 12 pm – 4 pm. For more information please call the Art Museum at 605-688-5423.