Julie Blackmon

Art Brokerage: Julie Blackmon American Artist: b. 1966. Julie Blackmon (born 1966 in Springfield, Missouri) is a photographer who lives and works in Missouri. Blackmon's photographs are inspired by her experience of growing up in a large family, her current role as both mother and photographer, and the timelessness of family dynamics. Blackmon studied art at Missouri State University where she became interested in photography and the work of photographers such as Sally Mann and Diane Arbus. Mind Games, Blackmon’s first major body of work, explores childhood play through a series of black and white images that deal with the external objects and internal imagination through which play is derived. In 2004, the series won her honorable mention in Project Competition hosted by the Santa Fe Center for Photography and a merit award from the Society of Contemporary Photography in Kansas City, MO. Following Mind Games, Blackmon switched to color film, and created the body of work "Domestic Vacations." The resulting photographs of family life appear at once disorderly and playful, and at times impossible. Blackmon says that the images in her series Domestic Vacations recall the tableaux of 17th century Dutch and Flemish painters, notably the chaotic familial scenes of Jan Steen. Tailored environments and carefully placed props are often a feature of her work. Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions and can be found in the permanent collections of the George Eastman House, Rochester, NY; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; and the Photographic Center Northwest, Seattle, WA. Blackmon’s photographs have also appeared in the pages of Time, The New Yorker, and Oxford American. In 2008, a monograph of Blackmon's work was published under the title Domestic Vacations. In 2014, her second monograph, "Homegrown," was published. In 2015 it won the National Silver in the Independent Publisher's Awards. Listings wanted.