Jarvis Grant was born in Mount Vernon, New York, in 1951. He attended Howard University where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1974. He was the Director of Howard University's Department of Art, Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography program from 1979 to 1993. Currently, Grant teaches at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C., and he is a researcher for the Smithsonian Institution Center of Museum Studies. Grant’s involvement with digital imaging and technology includes Community Leader for America Online's Art/Photography Teaching Forum. He is the recipient of the D.C. Commission of the Arts & Humanities 1994 and 1995 Photography Fellowship and Small Projects Grants in 1998 and 1999. In 2001, he was awarded an Arts Educator Fellowship from the Surdna Foundation and received the Integrated Arts & Technology Grant from the DC Commission of the Arts & Humanities. His work has appeared in Black Enterprise, Runners World, Muscle & Fitness, Advertising Age, House Beautiful, and The Washington Post Sunday Magazine.
The work that I’ve been producing over the past ten years is reflective of landscape combining three basic bodies of visual research. Initially, images are based on views taken while I move through the city landscape. Cityscapes intrigue me as cumulative energy of a community. Next are those images I physically collect as relics of nature. These objects are later reassembled in the darkroom to reveal stories of the invigorated relics. Most importantly are those images told to me from dreams or the wanderings of my spirit that are revealed and then documented. |
