Wenger, Jane

American, b. 1944

BiographyJane Wenger’s photographs simultaneously allure and repel, pairing the beauty of sound technical qualities with disturbing subject matter that warps our perception of reality. Working in serial form, Wenger has photographed the same anonymous bald man on numerous occasions, never once revealing his face. Instead, his bulbous head looms large in open panoramas, a spatial distortion created with the lens that recalls the paintings of surrealist Rene Magritte. Photographing the body close-up is Wenger’s preferred method, one that enables her to capture the subtleties of its expressive potential.

Jane Wenger was born in New York City in 1944. She earned a BFA in ceramics in 1966 from Alfred University (SUNY), where she studied with John Wood and experimented with photography. She received her MS in Photography at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design in 1969 and her MFA in photography from the School of Art and Design, University of Illinois Chicago in 1980. She taught photography at UIC from 1975-1986. Wenger has exhibited at MoMA PS1; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (MCA); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Milwaukee Art Museum. In addition to the Museum of Contemporary Photography, her work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art; MCA Chicago; and Indianapolis Museum of Art, among others.