Anna Collette is a photographer who explores conflicted notions of the contemporary landscape. Her work began in 2002 with a series rendering urban and suburban environments that focused on how the natural world—and human expectations of it—is being redefined, both visually and metaphorically, by the failed idealism of increasing development.

Her next series, Invasive Species (2005-2007), presents views of an invasive plant, Pueraria lobata or kudzu, which is overtaking large swaths of the Northeast. Here, the landscape is a metaphor for terrifying destruction and transcendent beauty at once.

Collette’s most recent work, Dark Landscapes (2008), portrays a forest at nightfall during winter. She exposed the negatives so each image is barely perceptible to the human eye, then used a scanner to read and render the negatives perfectly, revealing an impenetrable, tangled, and forbidding realm.

Collette was born in Massachusetts in 1974. She received a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and an MFA from Yale University. She teaches photography at the Massachusetts College of Art, and lives in New York City.

recent exhibitions:

Anna Collette, Dark Landscapes; and Steven B. Smith, The Weather and a Place to Live
November 9, 2009 – January 9, 2010
Sasha Wolf Gallery, New York, NY
www.sashawolf.com

Anna Collette, Invasive Species
January 22 – February 27, 2010
Kris Graves Projects, Brooklyn, NY
www.krisgravesprojects.com

Us and Them, Part II, 2010
MRFA Projects, New York, NY