Nan Brown | American, 1952 - 2013
Photographer Nan Brown (1952-2013) spent her early years in steel mill towns perched on the San Francisco Bay where her father was a mill worker. Her Martha Graham-trained mother taught dance to children. Growing up, Nan participated in the community hall dance recitals. Summer weeks were spent at the family mining claim in the northern Sierra, an area where Nan would later make her home.
In the 1970’s Nan studied photography at the San Francisco Art Institute. She taught herself Ansel Adams’ Zone System, and was especially influenced by his philosophy of craft. While largely self-instructed, she has studied with Mark Citret, John Sexton, and Peter Goin, as well as Ansel Adams. After moving to northeast California in 1975, Nan pursued a 15-year career in studio photography beginning in Susanville at historic Eastman’s Studio. She began teaching photography at Feather River College in 1988 and exhibited extensively until 1998. Following a ten-year, health-related hiatus, Nan exhibited in San Francisco, Boston, Portland, and Santa Barbara. Her work is in the permanent collections of Museum Fine Arts, Houston and the Southwest Museum of Photography. It has been published in Center for Fine Art Photography’s Portfolio ShowCase: Volume 4; Fraction Magazine: Issue 23; Black and White Magazine where it received an Excellence Award; and this year, in The Photo Review 2012 Competition Issue, juried by Robert Mann. Recently her work was accepted into the Special Collections at Stanford University's Art and Architecture Library.