Anne Arden McDonald is a Brooklyn-based visual artist who was born in London, England and grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. From age 15 to 30, she made photographic self portraits by building installations in the landscape or in abandoned interiors and performing privately for her camera in these spaces. She published a book of this work in 2004. More recently she has been making process- and science-inspired images which involve both photography and sculpture. Her work has been exhibited in contexts that range from self portrait, staged, ritual, plastic camera, antique process and experimental photography; to sculptural installations as large as a room and as small as a pocket watch.
McDonald’s work has been exhibited widely: in the past 24 years, she has had 44 solo exhibitions in 10 countries (about 230 total shows in 14 countries) and has been published in over 215 places in 20 countries, including in Aperture, European Photography, and Eyemazing magazine. Her work is in the collections of six major museums, including The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Denver Art Museum, The Detroit Institute of Art, and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. She was a Lapine Fellow at Millay and has been a resident at Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, Saltonstall Foundation, and the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program. She taught for six years at Parsons School of Design in New York, and has lectured about topics such as staged photography, self-portraiture, Czech and Slovak photography, alternative photography, and her own work.