ABOUT
Dona Ann McAdams has been making photographs for over fifty years, her work exhibited at venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The International Center for Photography, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, among other places.
Her books include Black Box: A Photographic Memoir (Saint Lucy Books, 2024) and Caught in the Act (Aperture, 1996). She is the recipient of a Dorothea Lange—Paul Taylor Prize from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, an Obie Award and a Bessie Award for her performance photography, and grants from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and the Vermont Arts Council.
Since 1983, she has been committed to bringing cameras and photography into small, underserved communities, setting up community darkrooms and teaching people how to shoot, process, and develop their own film and document their own lives. She has worked in places as diverse as adult homes for people living with mental illness, homeless shelters, small mountain communities in Appalachia, dairy farms in New England, and on the backstretch of thoroughbred racetracks.
Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The London Times, Art Forum, Doubletake, and Aperture. She has taught and lectured at, among other places, Rutgers University, New York University, The International Center for Photography, The American Center in Barcelona, Spain, and Hostos Community College, New York City.
She lives on a goat farm in Vermont.
Follow Dona on Instagram @dona_ann_mcadams
EXHIBITION CATALOGUES
The Garden of Eden, about people living with schizophrenia, was published by the Robert B. Menschel Photography Gallery at Syracuse University in 1997. Some Women, the catalogue for a 35-year survey of her work, was published by the Opalka Gallery of The Sage Colleges in 2009. The National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame published an exhibition catalogue in 2011, A View from the Backstretch, in conjunction with an exhibition of her photography workshops with backstretch workers at the Saratoga Racetrack. Brattleboro Museum & Art Center published Dona Ann McAdams: Performative Acts in conjunction with a retrospective exhibition, curated by John Killacky, that toured to five Vermont venues, 2019–2021.
ARTISTS’ BOOKS
Excerpts from the following artists’ books can be found in the portfolios linked to below:
The Nuclear Survival Kit (1980)
Alphabet City (1980)
The Barbie Book (1981)
Olympic City (1992)
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
McAdams’ work has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Artforum, DoubleTake (Winter 1998, Vol. 4, No. 1, p. 106), and Aperture. McAdams’ work features prominently in José Esteban Muñoz's Disidentifications (1999) and is also included in Tim Miller's The Body in the O (2019), Matthew Riemer & Leighton Brown's We Are Everywhere (2019), and Sarah Schulman's Let the Record Show (2021).