Jan Groover

Jan Groover made large-format still life photographs of bottles, utensils, and kitchen implements that are renowned as masterpieces of postmodern photography. Her embrace of color photography in the 1970s —when it was commonly associated with commercial photography and amateur snapshots —legitimized the medium as an art form; Artforum’s publication of one of Groover’s color photographs on its cover in January 1979 was considered to be a watershed moment in the history of photography. Groover was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1978 and received a mid-career retrospective at MoMA in 1987. Originally trained as a painter, Groover drew influence from painters Giorgio Morandi and Paul Cézanne. Her kitchen still lifes transformed ordinary household items into objects of beauty, connecting her work to feminist artists like Laurie Simmons and Martha Rosler.