A Fine-Art photographer melds her dual passions for photography and teaching.

by Debora Kuan

© Dana Fritz

Nature up-close: This image,“Banana Leaf, Biosphere 2,” is part of a larger series by Fritz titled Terraria Gigantica: The World Under Glass.

Even as a child, fine-art photographer Dana Fritz had an unusually sensitive relationship with nature. She disliked trips to her grandparents’ farm, and at home in a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, she was afraid to pick lettuce from her parents’ garden. “I just didn’t know what would happen. Would it die if I pulled it out? Should I just pick a leaf? The whole head?” she recalls with a laugh.

© Dana Fritz

Current work: “Rain Forest Back Room, Biosphere 2” was shot in Biosphere 2, which was designed as an airtight replica of the Earth’s environment, near Tucson, Arizona.

It became a running joke in the family, but Fritz now views that time spent on the farm and in the garden as being formative experiences for her as an artist. “I was never the kid always climbing trees or jumping in the river, but I could tell when I was on the farm that land was being used differently. My experience with nature was always controlled by culture—it was structured, delineated,” she says. “Even now, the word ‘nature’ itself is problematic to me. I don’t know what it means.”

The result of that uneasiness about the nature of nature, as Fritz calls it, has been a nearly unwavering attention to her current subject matter: gardens, plant life, biospheres and landscapes—real or artificial—all over the world.

Inspired by the work and teachings of photographer Mark Klett, who famously rephotographed scenes visited by the first photographic surveys of the West in the 1860s and 1870s in the Rephotographic Survey Project (1977-1979), Fritz became interested in land use and how it reflects cultural values as an undergraduate at the Kansas City Art Institute. When she went on to pursue her MFA at Arizona State University, where Klett taught, she got the chance to work with the photographer, as well as other faculty and students, on a grant project funded by ASU’s Institute for Studies in the Arts called Water as a Cultural Reflection. The grant project resulted in an interactive CD-ROM, which included video interviews about how water was used and thought of in the Phoenix area. An exhibition of photographs was also produced from the project; some were later acquired by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

© Dana Fritz

Gray scale: Fritz shot images in black-and-white so that viewers would contemplate the conceptual and cultural implications of gardens, rather than be distracted by the flora’s vivid colors.

During this time, Fritz primarily photographed dying palm trees, but she also did an extensive amount of research on native versus non-native plants in the desert and historical uses of plants in perfumes, medicine and Victorian flower language. “I became very interested in how a culture is revealed through its uses of plants, and this led me to formal gardens and my project Garden Views: the Culture of Nature,” she says. “I’m seduced by the aesthetics of architecture and landscape design, which often seamlessly blend the real and the fake in these giant terrariums.”

Garden Views was Fritz’s first major project, spanning a total of seven years and ending in 2006. The series was shot in black-and-white in order to foreground the conceptual and cultural implications of gardens that the viewer might be tempted to see as merely beautifully sculpted greenery if they were shot in color. Fritz also organized the images into rubrics such as Pattern & Patina, Maintenance & Microclimates and Geometry & Space to further emphasize not only the human inclination to cultivate and control nature but also its penchant for abstracting the concrete. “Responding to a conversation with a curator, I organized the images into [these] groups in order to de-emphasize the more obvious rubrics of location and tradition often associated with the gardens,” she explains.

Seven years devoted to one project may seem long to some people, but Fritz has always had a natural talent for focus. She took her first darkroom photography course in the eighth grade and had her first exhibition in high school. Growing up with a mother who was “a dedicated photographic documentarian of everything in our lives,” Fritz says she took very naturally to a camera. “Even as a child, I had an interest in composition, light and recognizable subject matter, as opposed to abstraction or non objectivity,” she says.

© Dana Fritz

In college, she studied photography and video, but in graduate school, where she was studying intermedia, she took a brief break, focusing on sculpture and installation. “I have always been motivated and inspired by ideas rather than media or processes, so moving from photography to sculpture/installation and back to photography never seemed odd to me,” Fritz says, explaining her conceptual approach to her craft.

While in grad school, she learned very quickly from just a few jobs that commercial photography was not for her. It became clear to her that teaching fine art was a much better use of her skills. As a graduate teaching assistant of record every semester at ASU, she had been given her own classes to teach, unlike many other graduate students whose teaching assignments were simply to assist a professor. Fritz had also worked as a teaching assistant in the photo lab as an undergraduate and had enjoyed teaching at camps for children. “So I had a lot of teaching experience when I finished my MFA,” she says.

It was a smart move on her part, since full-time teaching positions today for artists and fine-art photographers are nearly as hard to come by as gallery representation. Having that much teaching experience under her belt put her well ahead of most of her peers. Still, for the two and a half years after finishing her MFA, Fritz had to work numerous jobs just to get by. “I taught photography and foundation courses at three different community colleges and at ASU, as well as working at the Arizona Museum for Youth and being an artist-in-residence with the state of Arizona,” she says. During this time, she struggled to find the time, energy and money to make her work.

© Dana Fritz

Eventually, though, she landed her current full-time position as a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Visual Literacy program, where she now teaches perceptual drawing as well as a course called Beyond the Studio, which prepares students for life after graduation as a professional artist. “We cover grant writing, exhibition proposals, résumés, job applications, tax documentation of work and presenting work in shows and lectures,” she explains. Fritz calls the class an eye-opener, not only for the students but also for herself, in terms of keeping up on all the self-promotion and administration required outside of making fine-art work.

Fritz is particularly well-versed in one aspect of Beyond the Studio: grant writing. She estimates that she gets only about half of the grants she applies for, so it is vital that she constantly keep at it. UNL, however, is unique as a university because it offers so many grant opportunities. “There are university-wide research grant programs that fund proposals up to $10,000, and programs in the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts that fund proposals up to $5,000, plus college and departmental funds to support travel and attending conferences, etc,” she says. “Put simply, my work as it is would not be possible without their generous support.”

CAMERA: Nikon D80 LENS: AF Micro-NIKKOR 60mm f/2.8D AF-S DX Zoom-NIKKOR 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED COMPUTER: Mac Powerbook G4 and a 23-inch cinema display SOFTWARE: Adobe Lightroom PRINTER: Epson 4000

When asked to give advice to young photographers, Fritz is eager to unleash what seems like a never-ending list of good ideas: “Work hard! There are way too many people out there with BFAs and MFAs. You will need to distinguish yourself. Set high standards. Work on your art but don’t neglect to develop your writing and organizational and promotional skills. Seek out mentorship from someone you really respect. Don’t make it a one-way street—offer what you can in return. See photographs in person. Look for exhibitions that will build your résumé and not compromise your integrity. Join the Society for Photographic Education and attend conferences whenever you can. Maintain a network of friends and colleagues, and spread the word about their work as well.”

Fritz herself regularly participates in juried shows, but she does not have gallery representation yet. “I always say, ‘This year I’m going to work harder at that,’ but the truth is, it’s more important for me to show than to sell,” she says. “Gallery representation can benefit your career, but you can have a career without it.”

© Dana Fritz

Long-term project: Fritz dedicated seven years to photographing nature images for Garden Views.