Biographiea of the artists (Born 1944)

Jane Wenger was born in New York and received her BFA in ceramics from Alfred University, New York, in 1966. After moving to Chicago in the late 1960s, Wenger attended ID, where she completed the experimental but rigorous coursework developed by Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and others, receiving an MS degree in 1969; she later received an MFA from UIC in 1980.

Wenger was a cofounder of the short-lived but influential photography gallery within the feminist co-op Artemisia from 1976 to 1977. In 1985, Wenger bronzed her camera and retired from photography, although she continues to explore other media. Through black-and-white photographs focusing on the human body, Wenger expressed themes of physical and psychological tension and ambiguity. Among other sources of influence, Wenger cites fashion photography, which helped her to develop a sense of beauty and the controlled use of light and dark in her work. Her use of ambiguous space and elimination of references to scale add abstract and surreal elements to her photographs, similar to the qualities found in the paintings of René Magritte, an artist whose work influenced Wenger.

She attributes her choice of the body as landscape and her use of radical cropping to the work of British photographer Bill Brandt. Wenger’s various series include “Extended Arms” (1974-76), “Self-Portraits” (1976), and “Bald Heads” (1977), which present bodies and body parts manipulated by various photographic techniques to create intense and disturbing images. In the “Self-Portraits” series, Wenger transformed her nude body into a primal monument in a bleak landscape of sky and horizon line. These explorations culminated in the series “Faces” (1978-79), which features severely cropped faces, often caught in grimaces that seem about to burst out of the confines of the picture. Sharp contrasts of intense light and dark heighten the drama of the works. This series was additionally manipulated in Wenger’s 1981 environmental installation at the MCA, for which ten works were enlarged to four-by-six feet and displayed in an entirely black space.

The sense of disorientation was augmented by an enigmatic soundtrack of the grunts and groans of bodybuilders working out. Wenger’s solo exhibitions include those at MCA, the Milwaukee Art Museum, Foto Gallery, and P.S. 1 in New York, as well as Artemisia and Allan Frumkin galleries in Chicago. Her work was included in group shows at HPAC, the Chicago Cultural Center, and N.A.M.E. Gallery in Chicago, as well as the Lakeview Museum of Arts and Sciences in Peoria, Illinois. Wenger’s photographs are in prominent public collections.