Patty Carroll (born Chicago, IL; lives Chicago and Kansas City, MO) holds a BFA from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana and an MS from the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Since the 1970s, Carroll has been known for her use of highly intense, saturated color photographs. She has exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, IL as well as the Royal Photographic Society, Bath, United Kingdom and White Box Museum, Beijing, China, among others. Her series “Anonymous Woman” has been published in two monographs: Anonymous Women (Durham: Daylight Books, 2017) and Anonymous Women: Domestic Demise (Savannah: Ain’t Bad Books, 2020). Her other books include Spirited Visions: Portraits of Chicago Artists (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1991), Living the Life: the World of Elvis Tribute Artists (Burlington: Verve Editions, 2005) and Man Bites Dog (Lanham: AltaMira Press, 2012). Her work has been featured in prestigious blogs and international magazines such as the Huffington Post, The Cut, Ain’t Bad Magazine and British Journal of Photography. Her “Anonymous Woman” series has been exhibited internationally and has won multiple awards, including two Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowships and acknowledgment in Photolucida’s “Top 50” in 2014 and in 2017. Carroll taught photography at the university-level for over 40 years.
Statement from the Artist:
The series “Anonymous Women: Domestic Demise” is a fictional, humorous yet critical body of work about women, domestic identity and the internal drama of a lone female figure in her imaginary home. She is both a victim of her obsessions, activities, and circumstances as well as their invisible creator. In the studio, I create tableaus for the camera, featuring a lone female figure camouflaged in an abundance of domestic possessions commenting on managing a home. I have always been interested in bridging the line between reality and fiction, which is a difficult space for photography. The lone female figure represents people who feel isolated, exhausted, frustrated and generally at wit’s end during these difficult times.