Shelley Fuller: The States Project: Nebraska

Shelley Fuller: The States Project: Nebraska by Bradley PetersMarch 17, 2016

©Shelley Fuller

Shelley Fuller was one of my Professors while I was a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I took my last photography class at UNL in 2004, and I am lucky to have been a student of both Dave Read and Shelley Fuller. My life would be dramatically different if the time and place of my education were different in any respect. The culture of high standards and personal investment they fostered was influential to both my peers and me. Shelley has been photographing her family since long before I met her. The relationship between family portraits and photography goes back almost to the birth of the medium, and this subject hasn’t become less complicated in that time. In many ways, families understand themselves through their pictures. The emotions that we invest into family photographs are powerful, and Fuller is courageously trying to tackle this universally complicated subject.

Shelley T. Dougherty Fuller is Emeritus Associate Professor of Art in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Born in Orange, New Jersey (1948) she was raised in New Jersey and Idaho. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Augustana College, Sioux Falls, South Dakota and taught K-12 Art in South Dakota public schools. After receiving a Masters of Fine Arts from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, she taught at Moorhead State University, Moorhead, Minnesota. She joined the UNL faculty in 1990, teaching all levels of undergraduate and graduate fine art photography. She received the College of Fine and Performing Arts Outstanding Teaching Award in 1995. Her work is autobiographical, both factual and fiction. She has photographed her children, grandchildren, relatives and the children of friends for almost 50 years. Interests include the form and meaning created in family photographs and what they show of family relationships and life experiences. Her work has been exhibited nationally and has won numerous awards. She currently resides in Omaha, Nebraska.

Family Pictures

I photograph my family and friends in everyday life situations. The subject matter and the form are an investigation of how family pictures can convey meaning. Family relationships, friendships, and particularly children are of interest. Everyday life and experiences growing up are pictured as the subjects act out identities. Both factual and fictional, they are a record of my life. My photographs are a conversation I have with myself about the transitory nature of relationships, the passage of time, and about photography. I am looking at the ways the familiar looks in a familiar photograph.