B.A. Van Sise is an American photographer and author. He has worked as a travel photographer, and collections of his fine art photography has been exhibited in public installations by US museums.

B.A. Van Sise
Alma materFordham University
OccupationPhotographer

Career

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B.A. Van Sise is a graduate of Fordham University, with degrees in both Visual Arts and Modern Languages.[1] He has produced photo essays for publications including the Village Voice.[2][3] Van Sise is also a travel photographer,[4][5] through various publications and as a Nikon/AFAR travel photography ambassador.[6]

Solo exhibitions

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In 2016 he assembled the exhibition entitled Children of Grass.[7][8] He started the project by taking photographs of contemporary well-known poets in elaborate scenes and poses, matching those photos with the poet's own work.[9] Each of the poets assembled have claimed to be inspired at some point by Walt Whitman, and these photos will be exhibited in places including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.[8]

In 2017 Van Sise exhibited the first outdoor public installation to be held at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, entitled Eyewitness: Photographs. The exhibition was composed of 31 portraits of Holocaust survivors living in New York City.[10] Each portrait was expanded to 13 feet high and five feet wide, printed on vinyl.[11] In 2018 he exhibited his collection Sweat at the Peabody Essex Museum. Each of the photos exhibited a before and after photo of an athlete, first as they normally looked, and next just as they completed a training session.[12] Athletes included members of the New York Knicks, New York Cosmos, the Gotham Girls Roller Derby League, and competitors in the New York City Marathon.[13] In 2019, his exhibition A Portrait of Poetry was shown at the Center for Creative Photography and the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona.[14]

Van Sise is also known for his practice of creating only one photograph per day.[15] His daily photographs were the subject of a retrospective display at the Kansas City Public Library between 2019 and 2020 in the exhibition One Second.[16]

Books

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Van Sise also published the poetry book Children of Grass: A Portrait of American Poetry in 2019, which received an IPPY award in 2020.[17] The Times of London also named it one of their 2019 “books of the year”.[18] The Booklist wrote of the work that, “Van Sise has created a singular and irresistible volume of poetry and collaborative visual lyricism that will enthrall poetry lovers and break down the hesitation of those wary of the form.”[19]

References

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  1. ^ BWW News Desk. "Phase 2 of EYEWITNESS by B.A. Van Sise to Open at Museum of Jewish Heritage on 5/10".
  2. ^ "B.A. Van Sise - Authors". www.villagevoice.com.
  3. ^ "The Week in Art: Hillary Clinton at Planned Parenthood's Benefit Art Auction and Pioneer Works' Village Fête - artnet News". 6 May 2017.
  4. ^ "Couple Forgoes Traditional Wedding, Spends All Their Money to Make a Difference in Africa". 8 January 2018.
  5. ^ "Lomography - Those Who Wander: LomoAmigo B.A. Van Sise".
  6. ^ "Photos of the Cuban National Circus". 9 December 2017.
  7. ^ "In 'Whitman's Descendants,' photographing some of America's greatest living poets". PBS NewsHour. 6 November 2016.
  8. ^ a b "The Written Image: B. A. Van Sise's Children of Grass". 15 February 2017.
  9. ^ "12 Portraits Of Poets Show Sides You Really Wouldn't Expect". BuzzFeed. 17 April 2018.
  10. ^ "'So Valuable a Gift to Humanity': Speak Virtually with a Survivor at NYC's Museum of Jewish Heritage". www.cityguideny.com.
  11. ^ Levere, Jane L. (21 April 2017). "At Some Museums, the Art Is Now on the Outside". The New York Times.
  12. ^ "9 Photo Stories That Will Help You See The World A Little Differently". BuzzFeed. 23 March 2018.
  13. ^ "Sweat: An Image Gallery – PLAYTIME". playtime.pem.org.
  14. ^ "A Portrait of Poetry: Photographs and Video by B. A. Van Sise | Center for Creative Photography". ccp.arizona.edu. Archived from the original on 2019-04-24.
  15. ^ "In This Kansas City Show, A Photographer Crams a Year's Worth of Moments into a Single Second". November 2019.
  16. ^ "One Second". 12 October 2019.
  17. ^ "2020 Medalists Cat 1-34".
  18. ^ "Books of the Year 2019 - TLS".
  19. ^ https://www.booklistonline.com/Children-of-Grass-A-Portrait-of-American-Poetry/ [dead link]