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Gary L. Hallman | American, 1940 -

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Hallman received his BA in Political Science in 1966 and his MFA in Photography in 1971, both from the University of Minnesota.

Known for both his 1970s survey work (Minnesota Survey Project, which included other notable photographers: Frank Gohlke, Stuart Klipper and Tom Arndt), where he systematically documented the regional architecture of grain elevators and their surrounding environments, as well as his large-scale photographs that explore the limits of straight photography through setting up situations that forced very loose control and unpredictable conditions in which ordinary objects and banal sites became visually and conceptually layered through the use of flash, methods of delineation and isolation, and print-toning methods.

Selected exhibitions include: Twentieth Century American Photography, Nelson-Atkins Gallery (1974), 14 American Photographers, Baltimore Museum of Art (1975), Light Gallery (1975), Mirrors and Windows American Photography Since 1960, The Museum of Modern Art, (1978), The Minnesota Survey Project, Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, (1978), The Photographer’s Hand, International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House (1979), Photography: Recent Discoveries, De Cordova Museum (1980), Big Pictures by Contemporary Photographers, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC (1983).

Hallman received a National Endowment for the Art Photography Survey Grant in 1976-77 and He received a National Endowment for the Art Photographer’s Fellowship in 1975.

His photographs are included in numerous collections, including: National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; Art Institute of Chicago; De Cordova Museum; Fogg Art Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Minneapolis Institute of the Art; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York