Kenneth Josephson American, b. 1932

Kenneth Josephson (b. 1932) makes photographs about photography itself. He places one picture within another, holds a postcard against the view it depicts, introduces a photograph of a hand into the frame, or lays a ruler against the horizon, bringing the depicted object and its representation into the same image. The relationship between the two remains unresolved, and the photograph becomes an inquiry into how images construct, frame and mediate reality. Working in this vein for more than fifty years, Josephson helped establish the foundations of conceptual photography through work made in the 1960s and 1970s, before the term itself had entered common use.

Born in Detroit, Josephson studied with Minor White at the Rochester Institute of Technology before earning a master’s degree in 1960 from the Institute of Design in Chicago, the Bauhaus’s American successor. There, he belonged to the first generation to graduate in photography and studied with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. That same year, he joined the faculty of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he taught until 1997, influencing two generations of photographers.

In 1963, Josephson became a founding member of the Society for Photographic Education. The following year, John Szarkowski included his work in The Photographer’s Eye at The Museum of Modern Art; the exhibition subsequently travelled to forty venues over eight years. Josephson received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972 and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1975 and 1979.

His practice encompasses black-and-white prints, assemblage and casually made Polaroids, united by a conceptual precision and a dry, often unexpected humor rare in photography of such intellectual seriousness. Where the early work foregrounds the mechanics of perception and representation, his later photographs often assume a more meditative character.

In 1999, the Art Institute of Chicago presented Josephson’s first museum retrospective, bringing together 150 works. The exhibition travelled to the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2001. Josephson lives and works in Chicago. Bruce Silverstein Gallery included his work in The New Bauhaus: 1930–1971 (2002).