Untitled

A black and white photograph of an old barn with sloping roof.

William Clift (American, b.1944) was born and raised in Boston, MA, however, his work is mainly comprised of scenes of New Mexico, including Santa Fe—where he has lived since 1971—along with views of Mont Saint Michel, AZ, and St. Louis, MO. He works primarily in black and white photography, specifically gelatin silver prints. Clift’s education began with a workshop taught by Paul Caponigro. In the 1980s, he went on to work with another photographer, Stephen Shore, on a project to photograph the Hudson River Highlands. His images of various mountains and deserts are his most well known.

Architectural subjects have also been a major component of his work, including a 1970 series for the Massachusetts Council on the Arts on Old Boston City Hall, as well as a project on American county courthouses in the mid-1970s.

Clift has been awarded several important fellowships over his career, such as two from the National Endowment for the Arts, in 1972 and 1979, and two from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, in 1973 and 1980. In 1987, Clift received the Governor’s Award for Excellence and Achievement in the Arts in New Mexico. Impressively, Clift’s work is featured in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Saint Louis Art Museum, among other notable institutions. Two significant solo exhibitions include Certain Places (1987), at the Art Institute of Chicago, and The Photographs of William Clift (1993), at AXA Gallery in New York.
(Artnet website)