Tema Stauffer

(b.1973; resides New York, NY)

I started concentrating on the mood of the landscape in small towns and suburbs, often looking at the way ordinary pieces of the environment are transformed by light and color into something odd and beautiful.  - Tema Stauffer

The pictures of Tema Stauffer’s American Stills series are uncomplicated by movement, as the title implies, but they are hardly static. The unpopulated scenes can have the quiet of meditation or the tense anticipation of holding one’s breath, but a keen sense of changing light and time of day reveals each vision as temporary, ephemeral, exceptional. Begun in 2001, the project has focused on locations in Minnesota. Saturated color intensifies the presence and impact of each place.

Tema Stauffer was born in Durham, North Carolina in 1973. The recipient of two CAAP grants, Stauffer earned a BA from Oberlin College, Ohio (1995) and an MFA in photography from the University of Illinois at Chicago (1998). Exhibitions featuring her work include Heart Land at The Minnesota Center for Photography, CITY 2000 at the Chicago Cultural Center, andPropositions II at Musee Departmental D’Art Contemporain de Rouchechoart, France. Stauffer recently moved from Minneapolis to New York.