Jay Defeo Photographic Work

This monograph on the late, pioneering artist Jay DeFeo holds over 150 works, many previously unpublished and reproduced in their original size. After creating her masterpiece, The Rose, DeFeo moved to Marin County where she used the camera as an art tool. She tried various darkroom techniques to make photographs, contact sheets, and documents of her studio and paintings. Essays by experts explore the complexities of her photographic works, her use of "sculptural layering and illusionistic devices" and her "daring experimentation" with the medium, as she once stated: "My interest in photography...paralleled my expression as a painter."

DeFeo (1929-1989) was a renowned Bay Area artist, and her work was celebrated in a 2012 retrospective by the Whitney Museum of American Art.