The Photographs of Marilyn Nance

Event Date: November 9, 2004

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Marilyn Nance, photographer. Three placards. 1986. LC-DIG-ppmsca-05410

Marilyn Nance is a new media artist, photographer and storyteller. Her lecture and slide presentation present photographs from the Library of Congress' collections and from Ms. Nance's personal collections in a visual exploration of personal, cultural and national history.

Nance received the 2000 and 1989 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Photography, a 1993 NYFA Fellowship in Nonfiction Literature, and a 1987 New York State Council of the Arts Grant. A two-time finalist for the W. Eugene Smith Award in Humanistic Photography for her body of work on African spiritual culture in America, Nance photographed the Black Indians of New Orleans, an African religious village in South Carolina, a Baptist Church in Brooklyn, and the first Black Church in America. She is recognized by the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage as a community folklore scholar, an individual who has shown significant contribution to the collection, preservation and presentation of a traditional culture or region.

In addition to the photographs held by the Library of Congress, Nance's photographs can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American Art and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Her work has been published in A World History of Photography, The Black Photographers Annual, Life, the New York Times, the Village Voice, Essence, Aperture, NY Newsday, and A History of Women Photographers, and her photographs have been exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art, the Corcoran Gallery, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution.