10/06/06: Jane Evelyn Atwood
Born in New York and living in Paris since 1971, Jane Evelyn Atwood is one of the world’s leading photojournalists.
In 1976, Atwood bought her first camera and began taking pictures of a group of street prostitutes in Paris.
It was partly on the strength of these photographs that Atwood received the first W. Eugene Smith Award, in 1980, for another story she had just started work on: blind children.
Prior to this, she had never published a photo.
Atwood’s particularity as a photographer lies in her in-depth approach, but she has also covered such news events as the Kobe earthquake of 1995, the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001, and the Democratic National Convention in 2004.
Jane Evelyn Atwood describes her method of work as "obsessive".
She does not move on to a new subject until she feels she has completely understood the one at hand and her own relation to it, and until she believes that her pictures reflect this understanding.
The work of Jane Evelyn Atwood appears in public and private collections and has received many honors since the W. Eugene Smith Award in 1980.
Among these are the Paris Match Grand Prix du Photojournalisme (1990), Leica's Oskar Barnack Award (1997), and an Alfred Eisenstaedt Award (1998).
Most recently, in 2005, Atwood received the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters from Bard College, thus joining a company of such previous laureates as Edward Saïd, Isaac Bashevis Singer and E.L. Doctorow.
In 1976, Atwood bought her first camera and began taking pictures of a group of street prostitutes in Paris.
It was partly on the strength of these photographs that Atwood received the first W. Eugene Smith Award, in 1980, for another story she had just started work on: blind children.
Prior to this, she had never published a photo.
Atwood’s particularity as a photographer lies in her in-depth approach, but she has also covered such news events as the Kobe earthquake of 1995, the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001, and the Democratic National Convention in 2004.
Jane Evelyn Atwood describes her method of work as "obsessive".
She does not move on to a new subject until she feels she has completely understood the one at hand and her own relation to it, and until she believes that her pictures reflect this understanding.
The work of Jane Evelyn Atwood appears in public and private collections and has received many honors since the W. Eugene Smith Award in 1980.
Among these are the Paris Match Grand Prix du Photojournalisme (1990), Leica's Oskar Barnack Award (1997), and an Alfred Eisenstaedt Award (1998).
Most recently, in 2005, Atwood received the Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters from Bard College, thus joining a company of such previous laureates as Edward Saïd, Isaac Bashevis Singer and E.L. Doctorow.
Kosta wrote: