Greta Pratt
1955 - Present
Begun in 1991, the photographs in Greta Pratt's ongoing series Using History explore how we perceive history — specifically, American history — through individual experience, notions of patriotism, nostalgia and community. Pratt depicts physical historic sites, re-enactments and museums with an eye to how locals and tourists alike interact with them today — simultaneously capturing past, present and future with warmth and wit.
Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1987, Greta Pratt holds a BFA in photography and sculpture from University of Minnesota (1984) and an MFA in intermedia design from SUNY New Paltz (2005). Her photographs have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Spin, and Mother Jones. They are also held in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Madison Art Center, Wisconsin; and Minneapolis Institute of Art, among others. Pratt lives in Ringwood, New Jersey.
In Search of the Corn Queen. Washington, DC: National Museum of American Art, 1994.
Pratt, Greta. Using History/Greta Pratt. Göttingen: Steidl, 2005.
Text © Museum of Contemporary Photography, 2018