Fritz, Dana

American, b. 1970

BiographyDana Fritz’s ongoing project Garden Views: the Culture of Nature includes more than 80 prints from the diverse gardens of the United States, England, France, Italy, Spain, and Japan. The beauty of these carefully maintained spaces concerns Fritz less than what that careful maintenance reveals about the cultures these gardens can be found in. To that end, her square gelatin-silver prints emphasize structure: examining the braces, binding, stakes, and wires used to control the flora, or else depicting the mowed, trimmed, and sheared aftermath of such efforts. These gardens evidence a world-wide desire not to protect nature so much as perfect it, improve on it at least, though just what that means varies from society to society.

Dana Fritz was born in 1970 in Kansas City, Missouri. She received a BFA in Photography/Video from Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, Missouri (1992) and an MFA in Intermedia from Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona (1995). Her work is included in the collections of Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, Arizona; Bibliothéque Nationale de France, Paris, France; Center for Photography at Woodstock, New Paltz, New York; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona; and Wayne State College, Wayne, Nebraska. Fritz is Hixson-Lied Professor of Art in the School of Art, Art History and Design at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.