Quick Facts
Biography
Jan Groover (April 24, 1943 – January 1, 2012) was an American photographer who spent the last part of her life in Montpon-Menesterol, France, with her husband, a painter and critic named Bruce Boice. Groover was born in Plainfield, New Jersey and died in 2012 at Montpon-Ménestérol.
Groover received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1965 from Pratt Institute, and a Master of Arts in 1970 from Ohio State University.
Groover was noted for her use of emerging color technologies. In 1979, Groover began to use platinum prints for portraits and still lifes, transforming everyday items into beautiful, formal still lifes. In 1987, critic Andy Grundberg noted in The New York Times, “In 1978 an exhibition of her dramatic still-life photographs of objects in her kitchen sink caused a sensation. When one appeared on the cover of Artforum magazine, it was a signal that photography had arrived in the art world - complete with a marketplace to support it.”
Groover also used early 20th century camera technology, such as the banquet camera, for elongated, horizontal presentations of otherwise pedestrian items. In a New York Times review of Groover’s work exhibited at Janet Borden Inc., New York, in 1997, critic Roberta Miller called Groover’s work “beautiful and masterly in the extreme.”
Jan Groover’s work was the subject of a mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1987, for which an accompanying catalogue was printed. Her work has also been the subject of one-person exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art; Cleveland Museum of Art; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and the International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York.
Groover was also the subject of a short film by photographer Tina Barney entitled (Jan Groover: Tilting at Space, 1994).
Jan Groover is represented by New York gallery, Janet Borden Inc.
Awards
- NEA Fellowship, 1978
- Guggenheim Fellowship, 1978
- NEA Fellowship, 1983