Martha Madigan
(Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1950 - 2022, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania)
North America, American
Martha Madigan received a BS in Art Education from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1972 and a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1978. Madigan has been interested in experimental photography since her undergraduate studies, and her mature works are almost exclusively solar photograms—a type of photography that uses solar exposure to capture indexical traces of whatever human or botanical form Madigan places on the paper. Using the sun as a light source replicates natural processes of regeneration and the life cycle, echoing Madigan’s themes. Recently Madigan has taken the original solar photogram a step further by using a large flat bed scanner to add a positive, colored image of various botanicals to the solar print. Madigan has taught at the Tyler School of Art, part of Temple University, in Philadelphia since 1979. Martha Madigan is widely represented in national museums, including the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. She has received numerous awards including a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1980 and a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts in 1984.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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