Fran’s photo-paintings are in the permanent collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Grace Museum, The Sunnhordland Museum (Norway), The Jerry and Marilyn Comer Collection of Photography at The University of Texas at Dallas, and the North Down Museum (Northern Ireland). In 2022, she was included in “TOP 50” from the prestigious Photolucida’s Critical Mass.
Fran’s latest book, The Rest Between Two Notes: Selected Work, was published by Unicorn in 2020 and has won an International Photo Award and been selected as a Best Photography Book of 2020 by Elizabeth Avedon and What Will You Remember?. Fran’s book also was the sole feature in the photography magazine, Dek Unu, and it was featured in The British Journal of Photography, 1854 Media, L’Oeil de la Photographie, and others. Escape Artist: The Art of Fran Forman, was published by Schiffer Books in 2014 and has also won several prizes including a Best Photography Book by Elizabeth Avedon.
Fran has mounted many solo exhibitions, including The Henry Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock Abbey (England); BBA Gallery (Germany); Gauting Municipal (Germany): The Photographic Resource Center (England); The Massachusetts State House and The Griffin Museum of Photography; AfterImage Gallery (Texas); the University of North Dakota; Galeria Photo/Graphica (Mexico); Sohn Fine Art; OpenShutter (Colorado); and the Pucker Gallery (Massachusetts), as well as numerous group shows. Future solo exhibits include a retrospective at Endicott College and galleries in Mexico, Boston, and Cambridge. She has been featured in many magazines and publications as well as the recipient of multiple awards and prizes.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Fran studied art and sociology as an undergraduate at Brandeis University. She then received an MSW, working as a therapist for several years with heroin addicts and their families. Returning to her passion for making art, she began creating staged photographs. She earned an MFA from Boston University in graphic design, a field in which psychology melds with art. She spent most of her grad school years experimenting in the darkroom. In the early ‘90s, Fran began incorporating photography and digital collage into her design work. She designed several visually rich CD-roms and later became an art director at AOL-Time Warner. There, she designed the preeminent website devoted to African American culture.
Between professional life and raising her two daughters, Fran continued to create her personal art, combining her illustrative and photographic skills with her fascination with the human psyche. She recently retired from the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University where she was a Resident Scholar for 16 years. She teaches advanced workshops nationally and abroad. She is also a recipient of many honors and grants and has been an Artist-in-Residence at Halsnøy kloster (Norway), The Studios of Key West, and the Vermont Studio Center. She is often asked to curate and jury photo competitions, both nationally and internationally.
She is represented by Pucker Gallery (Boston, Massachusetts), Afterimage Gallery (Dallas, Texas), Susan Spiritus Gallery (Newport Beach, California), BBA Gallery (Berlin, Germany), and Photographic Gallery (San Miguel de Allende, Mexico).