Jo Ann Callis

Acclaimed photographer Jo Ann Callis turns her lens on the dramatic, erotic, and psychological undertones hidden within domestic life. Since the mid-1970s, Callis has staged fetishistic tableaux that may conjure uncanny feelings and anxieties, and she is considered a pioneer of the “fabricated photographs” movement. In 2009, the J. Paul Getty Museum presented a retrospective of her work; since then, her photographs have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, LACMA, the Hammer Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In her sensual but discomfiting color photographs, images of seminude women, elegant pastries, and tablescapes are charged with sexual innuendo or a looming sense of dread. Photography is just one aspect of Callis’s work; she also designs and makes the props and sets that appear alongside models in her images, components that are equally essential to the final result.