Jenny Irene Miller makes Silver List of emerging photo artists
Jenny Irene Miller, who is originally from Nome, was named on this year’s Silver List of emerging photo artists.
“I’m honored and humbled that I made the list, and it’s especially exciting that folks have seen my work and they believe in my photographic practice,” Miller told the Nugget.
The list, which included 24 artists this year, is put together by a nonprofit art space in Pittsburgh called Silver Eye. To compile the Silver List, the art space sent out a survey to nearly 100 photography professionals. Respondents were asked to name up to ten early-career photo artists whose work should be seen more widely. The artists who were most often named in the survey made the final list.
According to Silver Eye, the purpose of the list is “to give the artists exposure, to invite curators, educators, and publishers to participate in a collective conversation about the trajectories of contemporary photography and to create visibility for historically underrepresented artists, and to give the public an opportunity to see work that photography professionals consider to be exciting, important, and meaningful.”
Now in its third year, the list is inspired by a similar survey known as the Black List, which ranks film insiders’ top unproduced screenplays of the year.
“It feels really good that photography professionals—curators, educators, publishers, and researchers working in photography in North America—know about me and my work and want to see more of it,” Miller said. “That feels really good, especially being in Alaska, where artists can feel kind of isolated from what’s going on in the Lower 48.”
Miller said the photographic art scenes are very robust in places like New York City, LA and even New Mexico, where she recently completed her graduate studies. Artists in Alaska have less access to the major exhibitions and gallery shows of more populous parts of the continent. “We can’t just take a train to the MoMA and look at the new Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition,” Miller said.
Still, Alaska has “a really thriving, really incredible arts community, too,” Miller said.
Since moving back to Alaska from New Mexico last year, Miller said her practice and artistic vision hasn’t changed drastically. They (Miller uses she/they pronouns) still focus on making images of their family and their work explores Indigenous and queer identities.
“Being back home has allowed me to make pictures of people that I love,” Miller said.
In graduate school, Miller was working heavily with her family archive and remixing those photographs and documents, which she is continuing to do in Anchorage.
Miller has also been freelancing on projects that range from editorial work to corporate headshots. She recently photographed model Quannah ChasingHorse for the cover of Outside magazine.
Miller started a new project called “How to skip a rock” with photos made in Alaska. Those images will be on display at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in Anchorage in April 2024.