Dionne Lee

Lee grew up in Harlem, New York.[1] Lee has employed collage methods in her photography work, sometimes gluing together silver gelatin photographic negatives to create a new work.[1][2] Her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York,[3] and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.[4]

In 2010 Lee graduated with a BAFA of Fine Arts from Alfred University in Alfred, NY. In 2017 she graduated with a MFA from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

Lee is teaching and creating photography in Northern California and is currently an Artist-in-Residence at The Chinati Foundation and Unseen California.

Experiencing childhood in Harlem, close to Central Park, Lee had hardly any insight into the historical backdrop of Seneca Village, the 19th century settlement established by free Black Americans; later, they were persuasively taken out from the land by prominent space to clear a path for the development of the recreation area that would one day give Lee's first insight of the natural world. Now, making and showing photography in Northern California, Lee analyzes the historical backdrop of American scene photography, posing inquiries about who caught these pictures of the land and what the pictures were utilized for. Lee's works are made through control and duplication; among different techniques, she uses twofold openings, checking, montage, and added graphite. The works are every now and again a mixture of pictures she's taken and pictures she's found, and she likes the vagueness that exists between them.[5] One wellspring of her symbolism is wild endurance manuals, which are designed for showing abilities; in different works, Lee practices and plays out these abilities herself, re-encapsulating the activities and signs that have been involved by others for ages.

More recently, Lee, who is currently situated in Oakland and educates at Stanford, has been making montages. She frequently sticks together twofold uncovered gelatin silver prints, tracked down pictures, and graphite drawings.[6] In two related arrangements, “North”, 2019, gelatin silver print collage, 14 by 11 inches; “True North”, collage of gelatin silver prints with graphite, 12x16"; we see the craftsman's hands motion up pinkies expanded, thumbs touching, and the three center fingers of each hand bent inward.

In a sound track going with the works in “Companion Pieces: New Photography 2020," an internet based display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Lee says the pictures are a praise to her predecessors who explored North on the Underground Railroad.[6] The works bespeak Lee's advantage in investigating the body's relationship to the land, and in instruments that work with endurance in the wild, a capacity pertinent to both social history and environmental change.

Some of Lee’s major exhibitions include Trap and Lean To at Light Work in Syracuse, NY,  Continuum: Aspen Mays + Dionne Lee, Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh, PA and Running, rigging, wading, at the Interface Gallery in Oakland, CA.

Lee’s work can be found in different public collections around the United States. Her work is featured in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX, Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ, Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts, Tallahassee, FL

Light Work, Syracuse, NY, Center for Photography at Woodstock Collection at SUNY New Paltz, NY

Lee has won several awards and nominations including the 2022 Artist-in-Residence, Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX, Artist-in-Residence, Unseen California, the 2021 Artist-in-Residence, Light Work, Syracuse, NY and  Artist-in-Residence, Unseen California, a  2019 Finalist, TOSA Studio Award Finalist, San Francisco Artadia Award Artist-in-Residence, Center for Photography at Woodstock, Woodstock, NY, Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant, Finalist, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art SECA Award 2016   Barclay Simpson Award California College of the Arts / Anderson Ranch Residency Program, Snowmass, CO, and a 2011   Photography Fellow for Baxter Street @ Camera Club of New York, New York, NY