LEN JENSHEL BIOGRAPHY

Len Jenshel is one of the pioneers of "The New Color" revolution that began in the late 1970's and he has been at the forefront of those photographers documenting the changing American landscape.

His monographs include Travels in the American West (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992).  This book explores the two great American obsessions with landscape - the romance of the wild frontier and the need to conquer and control that very same wilderness.  This stark and humorous account shows the ironies of tourism, development, and the dichotomy of the great western myth.   HOT SPOTS: America's Volcanic Landscape, was co-published with his wife, Diane Cook (Bulfinch Press, Little Brown 1996), and was the winner of the Golden Light/Ernst Haas award for the best landscape photography book of 1996.  This book pairs color by Jenshel with black & white by Cook and visually narrates the story of the earth creating itself, linking us to our geologic past.  The photographs describe the indelible mark that volcanoes leave on the landscape and our imagination.   In 1998, he began another collaboration with Diane Cook on public aquariums, again showing the harmonies, differences, and counterpoint of combining two sensibilities and two mediums (black & white and color).  This project explores such themes as the beauty and surreal quality of the deep, the blurring of the real world with the unreal, and  the control of nature.  Aquarium, the latest collaboration/publication by Len and Diane was published by Aperture, 2005. 

Jenshel’s photographs have been exhibited internationally in one-person shows at the Yokohama Museum in Japan, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the International Center of Photography in New York City, to name a few.  His work is represented in over one hundred collections worldwide, including the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Israeli Museum in Jerusalem, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the National Museum of American Art/Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC.  He is included in almost every show that incorporates landscape, development, and the American West.

He has been the recipient of numerous grants including the National Endowment for the Arts (1978), the Graham Foundation (1988), and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (1980).

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