Larry Merrill

Statement

Merrill’s most recently begun project is propelled by interests different from his street pictures. The trees allow for replacing narrative with lyricism. The images, while of trees, are just as much about photography’s rendering of the paradoxes of forms in space on a sheet of paper.

Selection of images from the series “Trees”:

Biography

Larry Merrill is one of very few American photographers to have had two solo exhibitions at the George Eastman House, most recently in 2011. His work is represented in several significant museum collections.

Merrill was born in Brooklyn in 1948. He attended Bard College, studying literature, and he got an MFA from the University of Minnesota. He has taught photography at Nazareth College in Rochester, N.Y., served as director of education at the George Eastman House, and ran the studio art school of the University of Rochester Art Museum (Memorial Art Gallery).

Merrill also worked under contract to the World Bank (Washington, D.C.) from 1999-2001 on a research project photographing the lives and works of traditional artisans in Bhutan, Haiti, Peru, and Senegal. In 2010 he was awarded a residence fellowship at the Jentel Arts Foundation in Wyoming. He served as a consultant to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, guest curating an exhibition in the Uris Education Gallery about the history of photographic technologies and their specific visual qualities.

To see more of Merrill’s photographs online, CLICK HERE.