Lynn Whitney

(b. 1953; resides Bowling Green, OH)

Cofferdam, Maumee River Crossing Project, Toledo OH 2003

Craig Memorial Bridge, Maumee River Crossing Project, Toledo, OH 2003

Road Bed Support, Maumee River Crossing Project, Toledo, OH 2004

Lynn Whitney’s photographs document the project to replace The Craig Memorial Bridge that is suspended over the Maumee River in Toledo, Ohio connecting Interstate 280. Captured with an eight by ten large-format camera, these black-and-white formal studies of this massive structure depict remnants of the old bridge as well as the new. Whitney’s photographs document not only the change that the bridge is undergoing, but also the transformation of the overall landscape. Her pictures comment on how the bridge’s magnitude and construction impose upon the landscape, workers, and residents of the surrounding area.

Lynn Whitney was born in 1953. She received a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art (1984) and an MFA in Photography from Yale University, New Haven, CT (1986). Whitney’s work is held in the collections of institutions including the Toledo Museum of Art; Yale University’s, Sterling Memorial Library; and the Southeast Center for Photographic Studies, Daytona Beach, FL. She has exhibited at venues including Jinan Art Museum, China; the Toledo Museum of Art and the University of Florida, Ham Museum of Art, Gainesville, FL. Lynn Whitney is currently an Associate Professor and Area Head of Photography at Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH.

—Katie Toscano

PAST PORTFOLIO

Margaret, 2002

Kayaks, 2002

Waterville, OH, 1999

Known for her true-to-life depictions of such regimented groups as soldiers and nuns, Lynn Whitney turns her attention to the rituals of family in her Waterville, OH series. Softly rendered pictures find the photographer, her husband, their small children, and two dogs outdoors in the warmer months, engaged in the small moments of parenting and growing-up that make them a family. These documentary-style silver gelatin prints present familiar scenes, and yet the conspicuous cable-release in Whitney’s hand or the faces nearly cropped out of the frame hint at the considered construction of these photographs and thus subtly subvert our understanding of the family picture.