Meghann Riepenhoff

Meghann Riepenhoff on Bainbridge Island

Meghann Riepenhoff Biography With her unique cameraless photographs, Meghann Riepenhoff (b. 1979; Atlanta, GA) captures the ebb and flow of time, examining humans’ relationship with the environment and our impermanent place within it. Cyanotypes are one of the oldest photographic processes, dating back to 1842, and are a camera less photograph created by exposing paper coated with a solution of iron salts to ultraviolet light. Riepenhoff works in unison with river and ocean currents, allowing wind, water, and sediment to imprint on the paper’s surface; she also exposes the paper to rain or snow, revealing crystals, droplets, and kaleidoscopic patterns created by the elements. Reckoning with questions of time, impermanence, and environmentalism, the distinctive process that Meghann Riepenhoff employs for her most celebrated recent series — Littoral Drift, Ecotone, and 2022’s Ice — has earned her international renown, a 2018-19 Guggenheim fellowship, and a place within some of the most prestigious public and private collections. An Atlanta native, Meghann Riepenhoff earned her BFA in Photography from the University of Georgia, Athens, and her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. In 2018, Jackson Fine Art mounted her first solo exhibition in the south. That exhibition, titled Imprint, drew from Littoral Drift, Ecotone, and Muybridge Tides and featured both an exhibition-spanning Chronograph (a dynamic photobook in which a page was turned for each day of the show, exposing a new image) and an evolving Tidal Chart occupying one full room of the gallery space. For many of the works featured, Meghann Riepenhoff returned to Georgia to make photographs in landscapes where she spent the first half of her life — Georgia red clay stained prints made at the Chattahoochee River or in North Georgia lakes; rain drops from summer storms marked prints from Hilton Head Island’s shoreline. Meghann Riepenhoff ’s notable publications include The New York Times, ArtForum, the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine Lightbox, The Guardian, Foam, Oprah Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and Wired Magazine. Her two monographs with Radius Books and Yossi Milo Gallery — Littoral Drift + Ecotone (2018) and Ice (2022), featuring text from writer Rebecca Solnit, are both sold out. She was an artist in residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Rayko Photo Center, and the John Michael Kohler Center for the Arts, and was an affiliate at the Headlands Center for the Arts. In 2024, Meghann Riepenhoff is participating in a collaboration in the Marshall Islands . Launched by Cape Farewell, and coordinated with Michael Light and Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, the mission will explore the two crucial issues facing the Marshallese people and their 3,000 year-old culture today: rising sea levels and the legacy of nuclear testing. In October of 2023, Jackson Fine Art will celebrate their inaugural year in a new custom gallery space with Meghann Riepenhoff and Richard Misrach: Duet , an exhibition jointly curated by the gallery, Riepenhoff, and her long-time mentor and friend Richard Misrach. Meghann Riepenhoff is included in many notable public collections, including the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Museum of Fine Arts Houston; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Harvard Art Museum; Amon Carter Museum of American Art; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Her work has been presented internationally in exhibitions across the globe, including at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Denver Art Museum, CO; C/O Berlin, Germany; and Aperture Foundation, New York, NY. Meghann Riepenhoff divides her time between Bainbridge Island, WA, and San Francisco, CA.