Tibbs, Millee

American, b.1976

BiographyMillee Tibbs’ series Mount Analogue explores photography’s ability to manipulate perceptions of reality. The series especially looks to the relationship and history between photography and the landscape, considering the impossible circumstance for a camera to translate the grandeur of nature accurately. Tibbs manipulates photographs of mountains in the darkroom, creating modernist geometric shapes into her images by adjusting tonal ranges through varying amounts of light exposure. In her words, the artist hopes to “examine the mind’s attempt to rationalize and tame that which exceeds the limits of perception.”

Millee Tibbs’ work is held in the permanent collections of the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY; the Portland Art Museum, OR; the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA; and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI; among others. In addition to numerous awards and grants, Tibbs has completed residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Sante Fe Art Institute. She is an Associate Professor of Photography at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. Her Mount Analogue series was exhibited at the Lianzhou Foto Festival, Lianzhou, China, curated by Museum of Contemporary Photography director Natasha Egan (2019).