Patty Carroll

(American, b. 1946)

Motel Blues, Las Vegas, 1978 from Sunset After Dark portfolio, 1978

Growing up, Patty Carroll and her family traveled every winter to spend a month or so in Florida. As an adult, she still finds herself drawn to vivid color, and the bits of American culture others might find exotic but which strike Carroll as familiar as her own childhood.

Motel Blues, Las Vegas certainly recalls the budget motels and intense palette she remembers from her youth. The photograph is part of Sunset After Dark, a portfolio of dye-transfer prints made in 1978. Dye-transfer is a labor-intensive process known for its vibrant color. Carroll thinks of these night pictures like film sets, and in fact suggested narratives for some of them 26 years later when she incorporated Sunset After Dark images in her 2004 faux movie poster project Dark and Deadly: Photographs and Digital Movie Posters.

Carroll’s taste for glitz and bright hues, not to mention her memory of American culture as she was growing up, are just as recognizable in her pictures of Elvis impersonators. Photographed on blank backgrounds like head shots or fake movie stills, the impersonators are isolated from context, removed from reality. Johnny Elvis (John Thompson) comes from a photo-shoot at an impersonator convention in Chicago, and he sparkles with adornment.

Patty Carroll was born in 1946 in Chicago, where she continues to live and work. She earned a BFA in Graphic Design from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana (1968) and an MS at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago (1972). There she studied under Aaron Siskind, Arthur Siegel, and Garry Winogrand; was classmates with Alan Cohen and Charlie Traub; became a self-proclaimed “techie” unafraid of experimentation; and learned the value of writing in conjunction with photographing. Once in charge of the Documentary concentration at Chicago’s Institute of Design, she has also taught at Studio Art Centers International, Florence, Italy; Royal College of Art, London, England; Aegean School of Fine Arts, Paros, Cyclades, Greece; and serves on the faculties of both the School of the Art Institute and Columbia College Chicago. Carroll was awarded two Artist Grants (1984 and 1987) and a Fellowship (2003) from the Illinois Arts Council. Her work is in the collections of such institutes as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Smithsonian Institution and Library of Congress, Washington D.C.; The Art Institute of Chicago and Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; California Museum of Photography, Riverside; and Biblioteque Nationale, Paris.

- Kendra Greene

Carroll, Patty. Cupid, You are a Killer. Park Ridge, Illinois: Pickwick Publishing, 1982.

Carroll, Patty. Double Message. Park Ridge, Illinois: Pickwick Publishing, 1984.

Carroll, Patty. Spirited Visions: Portraits of Chicago Artists by Patty Carroll. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991.

Margolin, Victor. Culture Is Everywhere. New York: Prestel, 2002.

http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/pcarroll.html

http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/audio_library/hb_jun04.asp

http://www.elimpersonators.com/RESUME.HTML

http://www.pattycarroll.com/