Dana Lixenberg

Dutch photographer and filmmaker (born 1964)

Dana Lixenberg (born 1964)^[1] is a Dutch photographer and filmmaker.^[2] She lives and works in New York and Amsterdam. Lixenberg pursues long-term projects on individuals and communities on the margins of society. Her books include Jeffersonville, Indiana (2005), The Last Days of Shishmaref (2008), Set Amsterdam (2011), De Burgemeester/The Mayor (2011), and Imperial Courts (2015).

In 2017 Lixenberg won the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize for her publication Imperial Courts (Roma, 2015).^[3]^[4]^[5] In 2021 she was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society.^[6]

Life and work

Lixenberg studied photography at the London College of Printing (1984–1986) and at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (1987–1989). She has had work published in Newsweek, Vibe, New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker and Rolling Stone.

Lixenberg pursues long-term projects with a primary focus on individuals and communities on the margins of society, such as Jeffersonville, Indiana, a collection of landscapes and portraits of the small town's homeless population photographed over a seven-year period, and The Last Days of Shishmaref, which portrays an Inupiaq community on an eroding island of the coast of Alaska.

She photographed Prince and Whitney Houston in an honest and introspective way.^[7] All her work is made with a large format camera.

Decisive in her career was the first series of photos she made in 1993 of Imperial Courts, a public housing project in Watts, Los Angeles. Lixenberg portrayed residents as distinctive and charismatic personalities, without direct references to their gang. The exhibition Imperial Courts, 1993-2015 at Huis Marseille in Amsterdam (2015) was the first comprehensive presentation of the Imperial Courts series, spanning a period of twenty-two years. As well as her photographs, the exhibition included a three channel video projection, an audio installation, and her book of the same name.

Publications

Imperial Courts, 1993-2015. Amsterdam: Roma, 2015. ISBN 9789491843426. With texts by Kenneth Cox, Lixenberg, and Carla Williams.

Awards

2017: Deutsche Börse Photography Prize for Imperial Courts (2015)^[3]^[4]^[5]
2021: Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society, Bristol^[8]

References

^ Hay, David. Bringing Out the Gravitas In a Tough Housing Project, The New York Times, May 30, 1999
^ Knight, Christopher. Art Review; Portraits That Go Way Beyond Face Value; Dana Lixenberg's photographs transcend the Watts neighborhood where she took them, Los Angeles Times, May 28, 1999
^ ^a ^b "Dana Lixenberg wins Deutsche Börse photography prize for shots of LA housing project". The Guardian. 18 May 2017. Retrieved 18 May 2017.
^ ^a ^b O'Hagan, Sean (1 March 2017). "'The cat in the coffin almost steals the show' … the Deutsche Börse photography prize". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2 March 2017.
^ ^a ^b "Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2017". www.deutscheboersephotographyfoundation.org. Retrieved 2022-03-17.
^ "The Royal Photographic Society Unveils its 2021 Award Winners". PetaPixel. 26 October 2021. Retrieved 2022-01-07.
^ Dana Lixenberg United States fototentoonstelling Archived 2011-06-11 at the Wayback Machine, VPRO, April 8, 2001
^ Rooke, Hannah (29 October 2021). "The Royal Photographic Society announces its 2021 award winners". digitalcameraworld. Retrieved 2022-01-07.