JOYCE CULVER
Joyce Culver was born in 1947 in Manhattan and raised in Ardsley, New York, in Westchester County. Inspired by photographers Brassai, Diane Arbus and Irving Penn, and her father's creative energy, Joyce began making socially concerned photographs while enrolled in photography classes taught by Oscar Bailey and Charles Swedlund at the State University College at Buffalo. Graduating in 1969 with a degree in Art Education, she taught high school art in Pittsford, New York until she was twenty-nine, then continued with an MFA in photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology where she studied with Bea Nettles and John Pfahl.
In 1978 Culver returned to New York City where, over a forty year period, taught photography at the School of Visual Arts, coordinated the photo program at Teachers College, Columbia University, and worked free-lance. She also taught her beloved students at Nassau Community College. As she became acclimated to city life and made friends in the LGBTQ community, which she was now part of, she began with portraits of friends and couples whom she knew, creating a portfolio of photographs exploring relationships. The work was supported by a New York Foundation grant in 1989, and Culver continued with the portraits through the 1990's using a four by five camera and Polaroid film. Photographs of Gay Pride were made throughout her career, as she continued to focus on the LBGTQ community.
Additional portfolios of photographs in her oeuvre of over forty years include: Coney Island in the late 1980's, A Change of Mind: An Alzheimer's Portrait of her father and his struggle with the disease, Lulu, her Senegal parrot whom she had for seventeen years, and her second bird Charles, a South American parakeet, who is now a subject. Culver's diverse portfolio also includes photographs of Irises, inspired by country living, as well as landscapes that she has paid attention to. A large portfolio of celebrity photographs from her fifteen years (2000-2015) of shooting at the 92Y in NYC number over one thousand.
Joyce's work is in many private and public collections including: The Amon Carter Museum, MOMA, the Albuquerque Museum of Art, International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, among others.