Susan Seubert (born 1970) is an American fine art and editorial photographer based in Portland, Oregon and Maui, Hawaii.[1] She has exhibited internationally, photographing subjects from Canada to Thailand.[2]
Early life and education
Seubert was born in 1970 in Indianapolis, Indiana,[3] the daughter of a nuclear physicist and a Russian scholar and attorney.[4]
...photography is a form of visual communication — sometimes it's didactic and sometimes it's more conceptual. It's like having a toolbox — a hammer is good for one thing and a screwdriver another… an ambrotype is good for a certain kind of visual communication whereas a digital file is good for another.
Seubert's first assignment for Newsweek was related to the 1994 Tonya Harding story.[1] Since that time, according to Ifanie Bell, "The Portland-based photographer still makes her living taking pictures, but she has turned her lenses toward capturing stunning shots of landscapes, life and leisure."[6]
In 2011 the Oregon Arts Commission said, "Seubert’s photography has been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad, including the 2005 Northwest Biennial, Tacoma Art Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2004; and the Portland Art Museum’s 1999 and 2001 Oregon Biennial. In 2001, Seubert was a finalist for the prestigious Betty Bowen Award at the Seattle Art Museum."[7]
Critical reception
National Geographic Travel Expeditions said Seubert's photography represents "a variety of subjects and... a sense of place through her wide-ranging imagery. Susan's in-depth knowledge of digital technologies and her multimedia skills keep her at the cutting edge of visual storytelling."[2]
Ken Johnson of the New York Times wrote, "Elegant emblematic photographs by Susan Seubert symbolizing various phobias address danger only from an indirect, dryly philosophical distance."[8]
Bob Hicks of Oregon Arts Watch wrote of her exhibit "Not a Day Goes By",
Seubert’s exhibit on a subject most people don’t like to think about includes two series... depicting various methods of taking one’s own life. They are passionate and controlled and free of irony. The larger images in particular are unsettling and revealing. These ghostly images of faces misshapen by clinging bags of clear plastic are confrontational, and yet they’re not. The photographs are beautiful, simple, gorgeous in a way that seems strangely moving and serene, like Pietàs of the underworld.
