Joanne Leonard Explained

Joanne Leonard
Birth Date:	1940
Birth Place:	Los Angeles, CA - U.S.A.
Field:	Photography
Known For:	photographs, photo collages
Works:	Romanticism is Ultimately Fatal, Father and Daughter, West Oakland, CA, Not Losing Her Memory, Newspaper Diary: Trompe l'Oeil Photographs

Joanne Leonard is an American photographer, photo collage artist, and feminist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her work has been included in major art history textbooks and has been shown internationally in galleries and museums.^{[1] [2]}

Early life

Joanne Leonard was born in Los Angeles in 1940 to P. Alfred Leonard, originally of Mannheim, Germany, and Marjorie Rosenfeld Leonard. She has a twin sister, Eleanor (Rubin), who is also an artist, and a younger sister, Barbara (Handelman). She received a B.A. in Social Science from the University of California in 1962.^{[3] [1]} As infants, she and her twin sister were cast as a baby in the film The Lady Is Willing starring Marlene Dietrich.^[4]

Career

Leonard is known for her photographs and photo collages depicting private moments and personal struggles from women's lives once considered either taboo or unimportant. Her work struck a chord with the art world in the later part of the 20th century, and she was one of the few female artists to be featured in the 3rd edition of H.W. Janson’s History of Art.^[5] Her photograph, Julia and the Window of Vulnerability was chosen to illustrate the opening of the chapter, "The Modern World" in the 1991 edition of Gardner's Art Through the Ages.^[6]

She was an official photographer for the 1972 Winter Olympics.^[7]

She taught art and interdisciplinary courses at the University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design and now holds the title of Diane M. Kirkpatrick and Griselda Pollock Distinguished University Professor Emerita.^[1] She has one daughter, Julia.^[8]

Leonard's influence on the field of photography has been for making images of things, places, and people from women’s realms and private spaces—from a woman’s own perspective. A large body of her work is in photo collage,^[9] made with the goal of juxtaposing the intimate with social questions or political issues that are circulating today in the world. She is happily known for distinguished photo collage^[10] work as well.

Collections

Leonard's work is held by major collections, including:

• International Center of Photography in New York City^[11]
• Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts^[12] at Stanford University in Stanford, California
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art^[13]
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art^[14]
• Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York,^[15] which holds 62 of her photographs, all of which are digitized and available on their website
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art^[16] (SFMOMA)
• University of Michigan Museum of Art^[17]
• Whitney Museum of American Art^[18]

Quotations

• I built a darkroom when I could have fixed up a kitchen.^[19]
• My camera has always sought the beauty and light in a moment.^[20]
• Feminism is a tool for looking at what's missing.^[21]
• The making of the work, as miserable as I was (and it was a miserable time for me), was also a time of great excitement because I was doing something I had actually never seen before. I was finding ways to represent something I had no idea how to do.^[21]
• Anne Frank's Diary, for all the horror it conveyed, also said that a young girl's thoughts, and life, and everyday events could be important.^[21]

Videos

• Joanne Leonard: A Life in Pictures by the University of Michigan Press
• Collecting Conversations: Joanne Leonard, part of the Ransom Center series "Collecting Conversations: Five Women in American Photography" by the University of Texas at Austin

Bibliography

Photographic Memoirs

• Book: Being in pictures: an intimate photo memoir. 2008. University of Michigan Press. Ann Arbor. 978-0-47211-402-3.
• Newspaper Diary: Trompe l’Oeil Photographs, with essays by Amanda Krugliak and Wendy Kozol, University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities, 10 color plates, 5 incidental figures, with essays, 2 details in endpapers, 20 pages. 2012.

Manuscript

• Woman by Three. Menlo Park. Pacific Coast Publishers. 1969. First Edition. Illustrated by monochrome photographs.

Works from 1960s - present

• Early Work - Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, 1963^[22]
• West Oakland – 1963-72^[23]
• Family and Friends – 1962 - present^[24]
• High School Drum Corps - 1966^[25]
• Julia (daughter) with concentration - 1975-95 and sporadically, continuing to present^[26]
• Interiors – 1977-early 1980s. Home interiors photographed in conjunction with Human Arts and Technology (HAT) – a project funded by National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) Photography Surveys grant. Ultimately, the series incorporated images made earlier in the 1960s in West Oakland.^[27]
• Not Losing Her Memory (photographs and collages focusing on women in Leonard's family and her mother’s memory loss – 1980s and 1990s^[28]
• Roots and Wings - 1980s and 1990s^[29]
• Newspaper Diary Series – 2006 - present^[30]

Exhibitions

• Reproductive: Health, Fertility, Agency at Museum of Contemporary Photography, 19 Jan – 23 May 2021

Further reading

• Web site: Being in Pictures: Book Review. lensculture. (2008)
• Behind the Pictures: An Interview with Joanne Leonard. A/B: Auto/Biography Studies. 2014 . 10.1080/08989575.2014.921761 . Smith . Sidonie . Chansky . Ricia Anne . 29 . 11–25 . (2014)
• Web site: Artist Joanne Leonard on Coronavirus Curves and the Art of Everyday Life. University of Michigan Museum of Art. (2020)
• 5 Questions with Joanne Leonard by National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) curator Virginia (Ginny) Treanor (2022)
• Interanimation in Joanne Leonard’s Being in Pictures: An Intimate Photo Memoir (2008). Griselda Pollock. (2024). In: Schmitt, A. (eds) Hybridity in Life Writing. Palgrave Studies in Life Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. Hybridity in Life Writing: Combining Text and Images

Notes and References

1. Web site: Joanne Leonard. Brooklyn Museum Feminist Art Base. December 22, 2017.
2. Web site: Joanne Leonard. Stamps School of Art & Design. January 11, 2018.
3. Book: Leonard. Joanne. Being in Pictures. 2008. University of Michigan Press. Ann Arbor, MI. 9780472114023. 4.
4. Book: Leonard. Joanne. Being in Pictures. 2008. University of Michigan Press. Ann Arbor, MI. 9780472114023. 8.
5. Book: Janson. Horst Woldemar. History of Art. 1986. H.N. Abrams. New York. 013389388X. 781–782. 3rd.
6. Book: Gardner. Helen. Gardner's Art through the Ages. 1991. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. San Diego, CA. 0155037692. 858. 9th. registration.
7. Web site: O'Neill. Claire. Joanne Leonard's 'Being in Pictures'. The Picture Show: Photo Stories from NPR. NPR. May 17, 2009. December 22, 2017.
8. Web site: Being in Pictures An Intimate Photo Memoir. Michigan Publishing : University of Michigan Press. December 22, 2017.
9. Web site: Search Results for "Joanne leonard" – MoCP .
10. Web site: Joanne Leonard | Romanticism is Ultimately Fatal .
11. Web site: Being in Pictures . International Center of Photography . 17 May 2016 . April 2, 2019.
12. Web site: Another Morning. Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University. January 3, 2018.
13. Web site: Joanne Leonard. LACMA. January 3, 2018.
14. Web site: Joanne Leonard : Romanticism Is Ultimately Fatal . The Metropolitan Museum of Art . October 13, 2018.
15. Web site: Joanne Leonard . The Museum of Modern Art . October 15, 2020.
16. Web site: Joanne Leonard. SFMOMA. January 3, 2018.
17. Web site: Joanne Leonard. UMMA. 2020-04-13.
18. Web site: Joanne Leonard. Whitney Museum of American Art. May 1, 2024.
19. Web site: Joanne Leonard | MoMA.
20. https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2009/05/joanne_leonard.html/
21. Behind the Pictures: An Interview with Joanne Leonard . 10.1080/08989575.2014.921761 . 2014 . Smith . Sidonie . Chansky . Ricia Anne . A/B: Auto/Biography Studies . 29 . 11–25 .
22. Web site: Untitled | LACMA Collections .
23. Web site: Joanne Leonard | MoMA.
24. Web site: Joanne Leonard, Renowned for Her Trailblazing Photographic Practice, Gives 11 Works to the Jewish… . 7 March 2023 .
25. Web site: Joanne Leonard - Artists - Joseph Bellows Gallery .
26. Web site: Joanne Leonard - "Winged Ones" and other photos of Julia .
27. Web site: The Collection | MoMA.
28. Not Losing Her Memory: Stories in Photographs, Words and Collage . MFS Modern Fiction Studies . 1994 . 40 . 3 . 657–685 . Leonard . Joanne . 10.1353/mfs.1994.0004 .
29. Web site: Joanne Leonard - Various work, 1980s and 1990s .
30. Web site: Newspaper Diary Series . 2024-05-03 . en.