Jo Ann Callis

Jo Ann Callis was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and moved to Los Angeles in 1961. In 1970 she enrolled at UCLA, where she studied with Robert Heinecken among other prominent artists, and in 1976 she began teaching at CalArts, where she remains on the faculty of the Program in Photography and Media.

A pioneer of staged colour photography, Callis has continued to photograph, draw and paint throughout her career. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Hammer Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2009 the J. Paul Getty Museum presented Woman Twirling, a retrospective of her work.

She has received three NEA Fellowships and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was honoured with the 2023 Lucie Award for Achievement in Fine Art.