"I don’t think that I would express my “finding” photography as the thing I was supposed to be doing. There was a lot I wanted to know about the world, and even more that I did not know about myself. Photography was a way of expression which touched certain subjective, deep sensibilities within myself and definitely was a way for me to engage with a world about which I knew very little." - Sheron Rupp
Sheron Rupp was born in 1943 in Mansfield, Ohio where she spent her formative years. After graduating in 1965 with degrees in sociology and psychology from Denison University, she moved to the east coast and developed a career in university press publishing.
She considers herself a self-taught photographer, having taken a course in beginning photography at a local arts center in Cambridge, Ma. when she acquired her first camera around 1970. For a short time, Sheron was enrolled in evening classes in drawing and design at the Boston Museum School.
In 1980, Sheron was accepted into a new MFA program in photography between the University of Massachusetts and Hampshire College. It was at this time that she began photographing with color film. At almost forty, Sheron received her MFA degree in photography in 1982.
Today Sheron Rupp is best known for her color photographs of people, especially children, living in rural, small towns in America. Her photographs often include the rough and tumble of back yards and the quotidian moments in family interactions.
"I prefer not to tell “favorite stories” about my photographs, as that tends to fictionalize the lives of real people whom I don’t really know. I sense only what is before me, with a few words exchanged in a very short time, when compared to the lifetime of a complete stranger." - Sheron Rupp
Sheron Rupp’s color photographs are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The J. Paul Getty Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Smith College Museum of Art, the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College, the University Museum of Contemporary Art at UMass., Amherst, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, the National Gallery of Art, the DeCordova Museum, among others.
Grants and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (1990), the National Endowment for the Arts (1994 & 1986) and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation (1987 & 1984) have supported Sheron in her various projects to photograph rural, small town populations.
Taken from Memory is Sheron Rupp’s first book of her early color work. It was published in the Spring of 2019 by Kehrer Verlag.
For over forty-eight years, Sheron Rupp has lived in the foothills of the Berkshires in western Massachusetts, a place where she presently enjoys photographing its bucolic landscapes.
SELECTED COLLECTIONS:
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Sir Elton John Photography Collection, England Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
University Museum of Contemporary Art, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA
Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA
DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA
Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, MA
Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, MA
Springfield Technical Community College Foundation, Inc., Springfield, MA
College Art Museum, University of Saint Joseph, West Hartford, CT
