JoAnn Verburg: a trend-bucking photographer gets a show at the museum of modern art in New York City—and its curator provides some background

BRENDAN LEMON: JoAnn Verburg is an American photographer who has been working in still lifes, portraits, and landscapes for 25 years. What is it about her work that compels your attention?

SUSAN KISMARIC: The museum has been following her work since the early 1980s and acquiring it periodically. The work seems very much apart from a lot of photography and art being made now. It is about human connection, whether between the people in the pictures or between the subjects and the viewer. It is the humanness and the accessibility that I like, yet the work is not quite as simple as it may appear. JoAnn tries to involve the viewer and does it through the color palette or through the black-and-white print. You're drawn in, and it's not a beauty-for-its-own-sake situation; it's one that often has conflict.

BL: Verburg's work seems unlike a lot of contemporary photography, which is photography about photography.

SK: That's true. Additionally, I find the work to be extremely emotional, which is not always the case with contemporary photography.

BL: Verburg's own background involved a lot of study of the history of photography.

SK: She came of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a time when audience participation was very important. One of the most important things to her is at least the illusion of having different ways of thinking about the subject, whether the subject is olive trees in Italy or people reading books or newspapers.

BL: Verburg is based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. How does that affect her work?

SK: She's not as caught up in the art world as someone in New York might be. She's always been aware of what's going on in the art world, but it's not something that has driven her impulses. I respect that.

BL: Verburg is the antithesis of the trend in photography toward large dimensions.

SK: Unlike Andreas Gursky, her work's dimensions aren't giant. Her career is getting bigger, however. She's represented by Pace/MacGill in New York, where she'll be having a show in September. She doesn't do the international art fairs, but her work is in private collections as well as in the collections of major institutions in the United States.

BL: Still, she's not a widely known entity.

SK: In this case MoMA is presenting the work of somebody whom relatively few people know about. But I'm glad the museum is still in a position to do a good-size exhibition like this--60 photographs--by someone whose work we have followed for a long time and whom we believe in.

Brendan Lemon is the editor of Lemon wade.com.

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