Brown, Lynne

In 1984 the Museum of Contemporary Photography invited a variety of artists to interpret Chicago’s Grant Park. The exhibition produced a year later included the work of more than 35 photographers, among them Lynne Brown, Jed Fielding, Tom Harney, and Bob Thall. At the time, Lynne Brown was working with images within images. The double exposure in Grant Park, from A Year in Chicago’s Grant Park took root in that interest while also exploring photography's relationship to memory. Brown’s interest in the photograph as personal and cultural artifact also informs her later series Mapping, one image of which was included in the 1995 portfolio of graduate student and faculty work from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The series is comprised of images that evoke a sense of damage or trauma to the body. Brown was intrigued that dermatologists actually create mole maps to keep track of changes in the skin, and in her photographs she set out to emphasize the topographic qualities of the back through careful lighting and a close-up viewpoint. The result is a visually ambiguous region, that is verges on abstraction while remaining recognizable as the human body. Brown was born in Dallas, Texas in 1951. She completed a BFA at the University of Denver (1972) and went on to earn an MFA (1981) and an Art History/Criticism Certificate (1982) at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Brown has worked as artist, educator, and curator during her career.