Jane Evelyn Atwood
France - United States • Born: 1947
Visions of France 

Jane Evelyn Atwood was born in the United States and now lives in France, dividing her time between Brittany and Paris. Since settling here in 1971, she has viewed the country through the eyes of a former outsider who has now become a citizen.

Atwood’s France is not a picturepostcard fantasy or a comforting national myth. It is a France revealed through faces, silhouettes, and silences. It is a country she knows intimately but one that never loses its complexity.

Atwood purchased her first camera in 1976 and moved to Rue des Lombards in Paris. There she began photographing male and female prostitutes in their dimly lit rooms, capturing the time they spent waiting, their moments of joy, and their fatigue. Her early work already contained the essence of her photojournalistic approach, which shows us that to understand a country, one must be willing to step through the looking glass and venture into the shadows.

Atwood does not simply document, she immerses herself in the lives of the people she photographs. In 1987, she followed Jean-Louis, the first person in France with AIDS who agreed to be photographed, accompanying him until the end of his life. At a time paralysed by fear and stigma around the epidemic, Atwood gave a face to those who society tried not to see.

Atwood’s work also documents the lives of women in prison, victims of landmines, and the lives of visually impaired children in many different countries. Awarded the prestigious W. Eugene Smith Prize in 1980, Atwood has remained unwavering in her commitment to ‘go where she feels she has to be.’ She approaches each setting with sharp insight, sensitivity, respect, and intelligence.

After working in Lebanon, Chad, the United States, Haiti and on numerous other assignments, Atwood has turned her lens to a completely different subject: horses. From the island of Ouessant, off the coast of Brittany, to the Mongolian steppe, she is drawn to their power, their taut muscles, their calm gaze and their majestic, elegant presence.

In medicine, it is now well recognised that spending time with animals, and the sense of closeness they offer to patients, can have real therapeutic effects. After a life spent photographing the excluded and the marginalised, and much of the pain and tragedy in the world, perhaps Atwood has found a form of calm in horses in motion, moving freely and shaped by the light… 

La Prairie.