Suzanne Camp Crosby
Bird and Hibiscus
1980

About the Item

Bird and Hibiscus Cibachrome print, 1980 Signed and dated by the artist in pencil lower right (see photo) Deaccessed from the Reader's Digest Association Collection (#18717) with label (see photo) Purchased from Lieberman & Saul Gallery, between 1986 and 1993 when the name oif the gallery changed to Julie Saul Projects Very small edition Provenance: Lieberman & Saul Gallery, New Yokr, NY (until 1985) (label verso) Reader's Digest Association (label) Condition: Excellent Image size: 9-7/8 x 9-7/8" (25 x 25 cm.) Frame size: 20-1/2 x 16-1/2" Suzanne Camp Crosby Posted by FMoPA Apr 7, 2021 FMoPA In Focus 0 Suzanne Camp Crosby, Gasparilla Ship, 2004 In December of 2020 beloved Tampa photographer and educator Suzanne Camp Crosby died. She had taught generations of students at the Hillsborough Community College where she had been a professor of photography for 38 years. Camp Crosby had the prestigious honor of being the 2004 City of Tampa Photo Laureate and the exhibition resulting from that body of work, Suzanne Camp Crosby: 2004 Photo Laureate City of Tampa Public Art – Big Picture Project, was presented at the Tampa Museum of Art that same year. Other awards include a Southeast Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in 1978-79. Suzanne Camp Crosby, Paper Flowers, c. 1990 The Florida Museum of Photographic Arts (FMoPA) has gratefully accepted the task of helping to place the photographic archives of this beloved artist. This collection includes more than 725 photographs spanning her career of over 40 years. A broad selection of this work will be brought into the collection of FMoPA, with an exhibition to follow in the summer of 2022. Other institutions in the area are also considering simultaneous showings. University of Tampa student Alyssa R. Miller has signed on to help with the documenting and digitizing of this body of work. This will help make it possible to distribute photographs to other institutions, with limited works to be sold to help finance the efforts. Examples of her photography are already currently held in the collections of FMoPA, the Tampa Museum of Art (TMA), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the New Orleans Museum of Art, among many others. Three wonderful examples of her talent are currently on view at the TMA’s exhibition Her World in Focus: Women Photographers from the Permanent Collection, on view until June 27, 2021. Suzanne Camp Crosby, Doris Day at Clothesline, 1980 Camp Crosby’s solo exhibitions include Suzanne Camp Crosby: Kid City, 2009 at FMoPA, and multiple exhibitions at the HCC Galleries, where she eventually became the Program Manager for the Visual Art and Dance departments in addition to her teaching and exhibitions. She also taught and received her MFA at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Additional schools where she was an instructor include the University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL, and the St. Petersburg College, Clearwater campus. Camp Crosby specialized in creating thematically directed photographs, created by adding unexpected objects or people to mostly everyday scenes. Her artwork is often playful and witty. Early work included tender black and white compositions often using her children or friends to create evocative scenes. Later photographs brought in color and experimentation. Examples include the juxtaposition of life-sized 2-D paper doll cut-outs of 1950s movie stars to real-life mundane household settings, as well as a wide selection of other artificial items placed into real-life settings. As a visual storyteller, she continued to explore and experiment with ideas and themes throughout her lengthy career. Courtesy The FLORIDA MUSEUM of PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTS Suzanne’s artwork is in many permanent collections, including the Tampa Museum of Art, the USF Museum of Contemporary Art, the Orlando Museum of Art, the Polk Museum of Art, the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Walt Disney World Corporation, Tropicana Corporate Collection, City Bank, Tampa Electric Company, Shriner’s Hospital, Tampa General Hospital, Hillsborough Community College, City of Tampa Public Art, City of Orlando Public Art, and the von Liebig Art Center. From ARTFORUM JULIE SAUL (1954–2022) Julie Saul, who through her long-running eponymous New York gallery did much to elevate contemporary photography within the art world, died February 4 in Tampa after a battle with a rare form of leukemia. Saul was known for her willingness to show an eclectic range of works in media ranging from painting to sculpture to video to ceramics by an equally diverse range of artists, but it was her eye for both traditional and avant-garde contemporary photography that cemented her reputation and that of her gallery, which she first established in 1986 in SoHo, then a frontier for the arts. Saul was born in Tampa on New Year’s Eve in 1954 to a father who was head of a sewn-products company and a housewife mother, a native New Yorker and volunteer docent whom Saul would later credit with introducing her to the arts. “Tampa had no museums, but she would take us to museums in New York,” she told the Tampa Bay Timesin 2003. “We had a house that wasn't filled with great art, but there were great reproductions and great art books.” In 1979, Saul moved to New York, obtaining her master’s degree from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts in 1982. Four years later, with partner Nancy Lieberman, she opened Lieberman Saul Gallery at 155 Spring Street in SoHo, showing contemporary photography at a time when not many others were. “One thing that drew me to photography from the very beginning—and it still holds—is that photography is an affordable medium. Almost anybody can afford to collect photographs,” she told the Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) in 2010. “Fundamentally, photography is a medium and what makes work great is the idea behind it and how well it’s executed.” Among the photographers whose work Saul championed are Nikolay Bakharev, Morton Bartlett, Eugene Bellocq, Andrew Bush, Sally Gall, Luigi Ghirri, Andrea Grützner, Sarah Anne Johnson, Adam Magyar, and Arne Svenson. She was instrumental as well in the career of painter Maira Kalman, ceramicist Christopher Russell, and multimedia artist Zachari Logan. Saul in 1993 moved her gallery, now known as the Julie Saul Gallery, to 560 Broadway. In 2000, the gallery took up residence at 545 West Twenty-Second Street in Chelsea, where it would remain until its 2019 closure, which Saul chalked up to diminished physical gallery attendance as audiences increasingly sought work online. Over the course of her career, Saul worked as an independent curator for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, both in New York. Additionally, she lectured at institutions including the Fashion Institute of Technology, NYU, and the School of Visual Arts, and served on the boards of AIPAD, ArtTable, and Her Justice. In 2010, the Aperture Foundation recognized her contribution to the arts. Saul recently initiated the idea of an exhibition devoted to the career of Berthe Weill after reading about the dealer in a footnote. “Berthe Weill: Indomitable Art Dealer of the Parisian Avant-Garde” will go on view at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery in fall 2024.

Creator:

Suzanne Camp Crosby (1948 - 2020, American)

Creation Year:

1980

Dimensions:

Height: 9.88 in (25.1 cm)Width: 9.88 in (25.1 cm)

Medium:

Photographic Paper

Movement & Style:

Naturalistic

Period:

1980-1989