John Wood
(1922-2012)
American
Born: Delhi, California , United States
Image: Portrait of John Wood by Sean Scheidt, Baltimore, 2012
John Wood is one of the pre-eminent American artists and educators of the 20th century. Born in Delhi, California in 1922, his early childhood was marked by the effects of the Great Depression. Regularly challenging traditional photography, he often incorporated other mediums to his work – including a variety of artistic forms such as collage, cliché verre, solarization, mixed media, and even offset lithography to drawing.
A master of process, Wood moved freely between conceptual and visual exploration, refusing to adhere to just a single style. Although he often raised questions about political, social, and environmental issues – he avoided promoting personal solutions or adding narratives to the images. He instead preferred to focus on the viewer’s interpretation and the possibility for multiple meanings.
In 1941, he volunteered for the Army Air Corps, where he served as a B-17 pilot. He subsequently trained as a visual designer and photographer at the Institute of Design in Chicago alongside fellow prominent photographers, Harry Callahan and Art Sinsabaugh. He earned his bachelor's degree in 1954 in visual design at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Wood then spent more than three decades teaching at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in New York. His teaching, art making, and his life were intricately entwined, each reinforcing the other. At the time of his death in 2012 he lived in Baltimore, Maryland, with the artist Laurie Snyder.
Wood has been exhibited widely, including a 2009 retrospective at the International Center of Photography and the Grey Art Gallery in New York. The Bruce Silverstein Gallery has organized two major exhibitions of his work in 2009 and 2012. Other exhibitions were held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Philadelphia Art Museum, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the George Eastman House, Rochester, and the Burchfield Penney Art Center among others.
His work can be found in most major collections, notably the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Baltimore Museum of Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; the Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester.