BIOGRAPHY
Working within the documentary tradition, Stacy Kranitz makes photographs that acknowledge the limits of photographic representation. Her images do not tell the “truth” but are honest about their inherent shortcomings, and thus reclaim these failures (exoticism, ambiguity, fetishization) as sympathetic equivalents in order to more forcefully convey the complexity and instability of the lives, places, and moments they depict.
Kranitz was born in Kentucky and currently lives in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Tennessee. She is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. Additional awards include the Michael P. Smith Fund for Documentary Photography (2017), a Southern Documentary Fund Research and Development grant (2020), a Puffin Foundation grant (2022), and a Center for Documentation Fellowship (2023). Her work was shortlisted for the Louis Roederer Discovery Award (2019). She has presented solo exhibitions of her photographs at the Diffusion Festival of Photography in Cardiff, Wales (2015), the Rencontres d’Arles in Arles, France, the Cortona on the Move festival in Cortona, Italy (2022) and the Tennessee Triennial (2023) Her photographs are in several public collections including the Harvard Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, and Duke Universities, Archive of Documentary Arts She works as an assignment photographer for publications including Time, National Geographic, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic and Mother Jones. Her first monograph, As it Was Give(n) to Me, was published by Twin Palms in 2022. It was shortlisted for a Paris Photo - Aperture First Photobook Award.
INTERVIEWS AND REVIEWS
2024 The Face - Stacy Kranitz is photographing life in rural Appalachia
Internazionale - Obligatory Choice
Nieman Storyboard - Following an unfinished story
Inside Appalachia - A Tennessee Photographer’s ‘Guttural’ Photos Of Appalachia
The Urbanaut Podcast - episode #31
2023 Bomb - Stacy Kranitz by Robert Alan Grand
Document Journal - Stacy Kranitz Captures Appalachia As It IS
Modern Art Notes - Episode 620: Stacy Kranitz and Kristine Potter
A Small Voice: Interviews with Photographers, Stacy Kranitz
Blind - The Missionary and the Villan
National Press Photographers Association - An Interview with Stacy Kranitz
To Be - Stacy Kranitz on the Power of Becoming Undone
2022 Atlantic - The Photographer Undoing the Myth of Appalachia
Fotografisk Tidskrift - Twelve years in One Place
Liberation - Stacy Kranitz, On Se Met Une Mine
Washington Post - Life in Appalachia in “As it Was Give(n) to Me
Collector Daily - Stacy Kranitz, As it was Give(n) to Me
Musee - Book Review: As It Was Give(n) to Me by Stacy Kranitz
PH Museum - Sunset Over Appalachia
Huck - Capturing a Different side to America’s Appalchia
Blind Magazine - The Ping Pong Effect
The Creative Independent - Photographer Stacy Kranitz on Remaining Curious
Columbia Journalism Review - Against ‘poor’ Reporting
It’s Nice That - Should Only Working Class Photographers take Pictures
I-D - Intimate photos of working-class life In Appalachia
Sixteen Journal Vol.7, 2022
2021 Nashville Scene - Girls on Film
Float Magazine - Life is Art
Devour the Land - Published by Harvard Art Museums, 2021
2020 PH Museum - A Rural, Working Class Rebellion in Appalachia
Burnaway Reader: Laws of Salvage, 2020
2019 It’s Nice That - Stacy Kranitz on the Flaws of Documentary Photography
Juxtapoz - Stacy Kranitz Explores the American Appalachia
Locate Arts - Interview: Stacy Kranitz
Liberation - Stacy Kranitz: La Photographie M’a Rendue a la Vie
British Journal of Photography - As it Was Give(n) To Me
The State Journal - Understanding Culture through the Lens
The Image of Whiteness: Contemporary Photography and Racialization - SPBH
Hot Shoe - Issue 203, Southern, 2019
2018 The Reservoir - Deep Down Cancer Alley
Sewanee Review - Fall 2018, 2018
Photofile #101 - Australian Center for Photography, 2018
Anxy, The Masculinity Issue, 2018
Polka #44, 2018
2017 PDN - Stacy Kranitz and Zoe Strauss on Their Collaborative Examination
2016 Ain't Bad - The Inimitable Otherness of Stacy Kranitz
Photo District News - Appalachian Odyssey
Juxtapoz - Stacy Kranitz – it’s All Personal
Mossless - Public/Private/Portrait, International Center for Photography
Time - Stacy Kranitz is TIME’s pick for Instagram Photographer of the Year
Dazed and Confused - Rethinking the Face of 'poverty' in America Today
The Guardian - Can a Photographs on the Appalachians Shuck Stereotypes
American Suburb X - Interrogating the Notion of Documentary Truth
Paper Journal - Interview: Stacy Kranitz, New Humanism
Blount Art Info - Lost Boys: Stacy Kranitz Exposes a Skate Park’s Dark Side
Time - Coming of Age in Skatopia, Ohio’s 88-Acre Skatepark
The Heavy Collective The Heavy Collective Volume One, 2015
2014 Photographers Sketchbooks - Thames and Hudson
DNCHT - #17, 2014
2013 British Journal of Photography - Kicking Against the Pricks
Columbia Journalism Review - On the Job, The Outsider
Dear Dave - Issue 15, 2013
2012 Granta - Issue 118, 2012
EDUCATION
University of California, Irvine, MFA, Department of Art
New York University, BA, Gallatin School of Individualized Study
GRANTS AND AWARDS
2023 Center for Visual Documentation Fellowship
2022 Paris Photo - Aperture First Photobook Award (Shortlisted)
Duke Archive of Documentary Arts Collection Award
The Puffin Foundation Grant
Field Projects Residency
2021 National Geographic Society Grant
Ella Lyman Cabot Trust Grant
2020 Guggenheim Fellowship
Southern Documentary Fund Research and Development Grant
We Women Grant
Magnum Foundation Fund Award
2019 Great Smoky Mountain National Park, Artist in Residency
Louis Roederer Discover Award (Shortlisted)
Crosstown Arts Residency
2017 Michael P. Smith Fund for Documentary Photography
Columbus State University, Artist in Residence
2015 Time Magazine Instagram Photographer of the Year
The Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences, Residency
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024 A Year after A Denied Abortion, Savignano sul Rubicone, Italy (forthcoming)
A Year after A Denied Abortion, Photoville, Brooklyn, NY
As it Was Give(n) To Me, CC Projects, New York, NY
2023 As it Was Give(n) To Me, Tennessee Triennial, ICA Chattanooga
2022 As it Was Give(n) To Me, Cortona on the Move, Cortona, Italy
2019 As it Was Give(n) To Me, Tracey Morgan Gallery, Asheville,NC
As it Was Give(n) To Me, Les Rencontres de la Photografie, Arles, France
2017 Fulcrum of Malice, Tracey Morgan Gallery, Asheville, NC
2015 As it Was Give(n) to Me, Diffusion, Cardiff Festival of Photography, Wales, UK
From the Study on Post Pubescent Manhood, Little Big Man Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2014 Once Entangled With it, No Other Place Seems Possible, Gallery Protocol, Gainesville, FL
TWO PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2023 Borderlines, KMAC Contemporary Art MUseum, Louisville, Kentucky
2021 Earthbound Riches, Rowe Gallery at UNC Charlotte, Charlotte, NC
2017 The Great Divide by Stacy Kranitz and Zoe Strauss, Lightfield Festival, Hudson, NY
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024 Creeps and Butterflies, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, Croatia
A Long Arc, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA
2023 A Long Arc, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
Beyond the Horizon, Cassilhaus, Chapel Hill, NC
2022 Reckonings and Reconstructions, Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA
America in Crisis, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
The Nature of the Future, Leu Art Gallery, Nashville, TN
Tender is Our Skin, Alabama Contemporary, Mobile, AL
2021 Devour the Land, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA
Looking Male, LaGrange Art Museum, LaGrange, AL
The Power of We, Empire Fulton Lawn in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn, NY
2020 Trump Revolution, Climate Crisis, Bronx Documentary Center, New York, NY
2018 Southbound, Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, Charleston, SC
Record/Off Record, Northern Kentucky University, Fotofocus Biennial, Highland Heights, KY
Photography Comes First and Language Follows, Currey Gallery, Nashville, TN
2017 Fake, Galerie Bohai, Hannover, Germany
2016 You, Me, Us and Them, W.C. Bradley Co. Museum, Columbus, GA
Familiar Difference, curated by Inocents, These Days Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2015 Dirt, Jancar Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Role Play, Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Denver, Colorado
2014 In Your Face, New Image Art, Los Angeles, CA
Louisiana, The Multi-Media Museum Moscow House of Photography, Moscow, Russia
2013 Recent Perspectives on Portraiture, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Harvard Art Museums
Museum of Fine Art, Houston
The Do Good Fund
Duke University, Archive of Documentary Arts
MONOGRAPHS
As It Was Give(n) to Me, Twin Palms, 2022