25-year Philadelphia photographer Jenny Lynn makes mark on Northeast

by Sarah Knowles

Over the past 25 years, blending between boundaries has become artist Jenny Lynn’s specialty. She is a photographer, fine artist and conceptual designer, known for her distinctive and diverse photographic style, which uses a mix of media. Not only is she currently based in Philadelphia, but her career has come full circle here. She graduated cum laude from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography in 1976 and since then, has found her work well-received again and again in many of the city’s galleries.

After completing her BFA at Temple, Lynn went on to pursue graduate studies in film and television in New York City at New York University. She studied there from 1977 through 1978, though she did not complete her degree once her studies clarified that her draw to the visual arts came from still pictures and not moving ones. While in New York, a few of her pieces were displayed as part of a group show at Soho Photo Gallery in January 1980.

The show at Soho Photo Gallery was her first formal one, but certainly not her last. In 1984 she was half of a two-person show at Twentieth Century Gallery in Philadelphia, and in 1985 she was invited to be part of Tyler School of Art’s 50th Anniversary Alumni Show.

In 1987 Lynn was given a Juror’s Award for artistic excellence by juror Peter MacGill. MacGill selected two of Lynn’s untitled pieces from her “Soliloquy” series, and each piece was comprised of two gelatin silver prints. These were displayed from Feb. 1-22 at New Jersey’s Perkins Center for the Arts in a wholly juried exhibition titled “Photography 6.”

The 1990s brought Lynn’s work into the public eye more frequently, with several exhibitions and college lectures in Philadelphia, New York, and other Northeast locations. In 1990 she was part of a group show at Philadelphia’s Muse Gallery; her work was the sole subject of a one-person show entitled “Everything Echoes” held in 1993 at the Community College of Philadelphia; and in 1996 Lynn’s work was part of a juried exhibition called “Photographers Only” displayed at The Visual Club in New York City.

Guest lectures had become more frequent for Lynn as well during this time. She presented her first in 1981 at the State University of New York at New Paltz. From 1989 through 1999, however, she delivered a total of seven at the following locations: Bucks County Community College in Bucks County, Penn., the Art Institute of Philadelphia, Drexel University, Temple’s Tyler School of Art, ASMP South Florida Chapter in Miami, Fla., Mount Airy Learning Tree’s PhotoSession Conference in Philadelphia, and the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Lynn enjoyed a particularly special honor in 1994 when she was commissioned by Michel Roux of the Absolut to produce a print ad as part of the vodka company’s Absolut Artist series. This ad appeared in publications such as Art Forum, Art News, Art in America, Art & Antiques, New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, and Vogue.

Asa Edlind, marketing assistant for Absolut, explained the concept of Lynn’s ad. “ABSOLUT LYNN reflects the artist's style of mixing dream and reality, chance and design, word and image, collective and personal consciousness. The visual is blue and white apart from the ABSOLUT on the bottle (which is hi-lighted in yellow) and incorporates other objects which have no apparent reason for being there, such as a film negative, a spider, a butterfly or even a blackjack,” she said.

With honors such as these under her belt, exhibitions became even more frequent, often overlapping. In 1996, her work was part of three separate shows. At the Robin Rice Gallery in New York City, Lynn’s black and white piece “The Bath” was featured in an exhibition titled “Summertime.” This exhibit ran from July 17 through Sept. 8 and solely featured Graphistock photographers. Curated by Sid Sachs, another group show, “Complexity and Contradiction: Postmodernism in Philadelphia Photography,” was exhibited at the Paley Design Center at the Philadelphia College of Textiles.

The two-person show “Beyond Narrative: Photographs of Jenny Lynn and Jill Mathis” was featured at two separate galleries: The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, Conn., and the Albin O. Kuhn Gallery. It came to an end on June 21, 1997.

That year Lynn’s work was featured in Massachusetts for the first time—in an exhibition titled “Selective Memory: Photographs of Martha’s Vineyard” at Gayhead Gallery in Gay Head, Mass. Lynn then returned to Philadelphia to present three more shows that year. Her work was featured in a group show called “Photographic Works on Paper” at Works on Paper Gallery, a one-person show called “Sight/Insight” at Philadelphia College of Textiles & Science, and as part of the Art in City Hall series in an exhibition called “Beyond the Silver Print,” which was juried by Kathleen Edwards, Martha Mock, and Richard Weisgrau.

Lynn’s work was especially well-received at her 1999 one-person show at St. Andrew’s Gallery at St. Andrew’s School in Middletown, Del. This show was titled, simply, “The Photographs of Jenny Lynn.”

John McGiff, a representative of the school’s art department, stated, “It consisted of original photographs, some of them mounted together to create an evocative surrealistic poetry of images- some stood marvelously on their own. She gave a slide show and artist's talk to the community here and everyone LOVED her and her work.”

She again lectured at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts as part of the school’s Paradigm Lecture Series in 2002, and then at Delaware College of Art & Design in Wilmington, Del., in 2003. She was granted the title “Master Lecturer” at the University of the Arts in 2003 in her third stint teaching there. Lynn had also taught at the university in 1995 and in 1988, instructing courses called “The Hand Altered Photograph” and “A Personal Approach to Commercial Photography,” respectively.

During this time Lynn also worked on a limited edition artists book that she called “Box of Blue.” This self-published venture featured a series of blue-tinted photographs boxed in a semi-clear case; it was completed in 2001. She formally debuted this book at a one-person show by the same title at Square One Gallery in New York City in early 2002.

That year she was also commissioned by Raymond Merritt to create a seven foot tall photo sculpture for a traveling exhibition called “A Thousand Hounds.” This piece, appropriately titled “DogTotem” is on the road currently as part of that traveling group exhibition. It originated in New York City on Jan. 17, 2002, at the Paine Webber Art Gallery, and will make stops at 10 more galleries before its end in March 2005. These galleries, in order, are: the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, the Columbus Museum in Ohio, the Ross Museum at Ohio Wesylan, the Delaware Art Museum, Winnepeg Gallery, Durham Western Heritage Museum, Seibu Department Store, Keihan Gallery, University of Maryland, and Avampato Discovery Museum. More information can be found about this traveling exhibit online at http://www.cygnetfoundation.org/.

Besides the “Thousand Hounds” show, Lynn’s work has been featured in several other galleries between 2000 and the present. In 2000 she was featured in two group shows: one called “Photography: Contemporary Prospect 2000” which was displayed in Yellow Springs, Penn., and one called “Blocks & Slabs: Dimensional Works” at Philadelphia’s Wexler Gallery.
A two-person show between Lynn and painter Jeffrey Jonczyk was featured at Industry: A Gallery at the end of 2000 through the beginning of 2001.

Her work then appeared in two more group exhibitions: in “Light 2: Images from the Photography Collections,” which was curated by Andy Grundberg at the Albin O. Kuhn Gallery in Baltimore, and in “Snapshot,” a traveling group exhibition organized by the Contemporary Museum of Baltimore that ran from Nov. 2, 2000, through Feb. 4, 2001.

A show curated by Toby Jurovics at Philadelphia’s Photo West Gallery included Lynn’s work in a show called “ReViewing Photography: ThePhotoReview @25” in 2002. In 2003, Lynn gained placement at a national juried exhibition titled “Just Color” at Philadelphia’s Artforms Gallery. Her work was chosen by juror Mary Virginia Swanson.

Philadelphia law firm Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll commissioned Lynn in 2002 to produce a gelatin silver photo-grid to be displayed at the company’s headquarters. Office representative Jamie Bischoff proudly explained, “it graces our conference center on the 42nd floor of the Mellon Bank building.”

Lynn’s most recent and current show is now on display at The Print Center in Philadelphia. The one-person exhibition began on Sept. 9 and will run through Nov. 6. One can find out more about this show, which is titled “Jenny Lynn: Photo+Object+Art,” by visiting the Print Center’s website at http://www.printcenter.org.