Stacy Kranitz: As it was Give(n) to Me

The ICA Chattanooga, as participating in the Tennessee Triennial: RE-PAIR, presents the complete opus of Stacy Kranitz’s body of work As it was Give(n) to Me (2010–21): an expanded artist-based archive of photographs, collected images, text, and sculptural objects that traces exploration and extraction in central Appalachia over the past decade. These documents reflect on our relationship to representations of reality and the inherent flaws and ruptures in constructed notions of truth.

Working within the documentary tradition, Kranitz makes photographs that acknowledge the limits of photographic representation. Her images do not tell the “truth” but are honest about their inherent shortcomings, and thus reclaim these failures (exoticism, ambiguity, fetishization) as sympathetic equivalents in order to more forcefully convey the complexity and instability of the lives, places, and moments they depict. Poised between notions of what is right and what is wrong, she uses photography to open up narratives that confront our understanding of culture, especially focused in the Appalachian region of the American southeast.

Kranitz’s exhibition will feature images from four sections of her artist archive, as well as a special artist study room that highlights research materials and sculptures that accompany the series. The study room will be a key conduit to connect to the UTC Honors College academic course that accompanies the exhibition and conversations around RE-PAIR.

Please see here for information on additional public programs & events during the exhibition’s run.

About Stacy Kranitz
American photographer Stacy Kranitz (American, b. 1976) was born in Kentucky and currently lives in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Tennessee. She is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. Her first monograph, As It Was Give(n) To Me (Twin Palms Publishers, 2022) is shortlisted for a Paris Photo / Aperture First PhotoBook Award. Additional awards include Time Magazine Instagram Photographer of the Year, the Michael P. Smith Fund for Documentary Photography and a Southern Documentary Fund Research and Development grant. Her work was shortlisted for the Louis Roederer Discovery Award (2019), and she has presented solo exhibitions of her photographs at the Diffusion Festival of Photography in Cardiff, Wales (2015) the Rencontres d’Arles in Arles, France and the Cortona on the Move festival in Cortona, Italy (2022). She works as an editorial photographer for clients including Time, Vice, National Geographic, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic and Mother Jones. She holds an MFA from University of California, Irvine’s Department of Art and a BA from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.