Beth Dow

Limited Edition Platinum Palladium Prints

English Gardens

Beth Dow is an artist and educator based in Minneapolis. Her research examines ways we shape and experience our environment, with a special interest in how we use photography to mediate that experience. Dow’s subject matter has touched on such seemingly disparate topics as formal English gardens, fake ruins, digital artifacts, and astrophotography, but these are unified in a focus on perception, experience, and sensory processing. She looks for ways to push at the edges of technology and perception while honoring the handmade processes of early photography. Dow calls herself analog-retentive, and is especially excited about finding ways to merge chance and the work of the hand with digital technology. She thinks of photographs more as objects rather than images, so the aesthetic and material qualities of paper prints are important and integral components of her work.

Beth Dow has received awards that include Grand Prize in the inaugural Photography.Book.Now competition, top-six finalist in the 2007 Critical Mass book award, two fellowships from the McKnight Foundation, and several grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board.

Her work has been exhibited internationally, and was featured in Perception Error, a two-gallery solo museum exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Dow’s photographs have been reviewed in many publications, including The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Village Voice, Boston Globe, and Minneapolis Star Tribune.