Frances Denny 2016 Deutsche Bank NYFA Fellow

Frances F. Denny, a young artist living in New York, was selected to be Deutsche Bank’s 2016 NYFA Fellow in the Photography category. Like visual essays, Denny explores female selfhood in terms of both cultural and personal significance. Submitting images from “Let Virtue Be your Guide,” which was also recently printed as a book, the artist focuses on her own extended family pictured within their living environments. She considers each in the context of historical legacies, inherited female expectations and a changing New England culture. From her statement:
“For the series I photographed three generations of my female relatives in nine homes across the East Coast. My subjects and their domestic spaces evoke a distinct and well-worn privilege, but in the photographs, seams pull apart exposing shifts across the generations. The resulting series challenge the notion of legacy and reckon with a traditional version of femininity.”

While “Let Virtue Be your Guide” studies a matrilineal ancestry, a subsequent series, “Pink Crush” considers feminine signifiers from girl-pop culture of the 80s and 90s. Her current project examines the archetype of the “witch” from both historical and contemporary vantage points.

Deutsche Bank has been supporting a NYFA Fellow annually since 1999. Each fellow receives a cash prize and the purchase of work for the collection.

For more information about the artist:
http://www.francesfdenny.com/

For more information about the DB Art program:
www.db.com/usa/art/index