Audio Tour - Facing the Lens

Harrison Photography Gallery 365

1205 - Vance Gellert
Interview at MIA, January 2011

Vance Gellert
American, born 1944
The Ring, 1994
Dye bleach color print
The Ethelyn Bros Photography Purchase Fund 2001.124

Born in St. Paul, Gellert has spent most of his life in the Twin Cities. After obtaining a Ph.D. in pharmacology in 1975, he turned to creative photography. He has made landscapes, portraits of Minnesota artists, and images of the people and customs of South America. When his son, Carl, was born in 1983, Gellert began a long series of staged, highly colorful images called CarlVision, in which he addressed the pleasures and terrors of fatherhood. In 1989, Gellert was a co-founder of the South Minneapolis alternative space, Parts Photographic Arts (now called the Minnesota Center for Photography), which he directed for thirteen years.