[B I O G R A P H Y ]

Edward Bateman was born in 1962 in Salt Lake City, Utah. He received his BFA in 1985 and his MFA in 2003 from the University of Utah. Bateman joined the faculty of the Department of Art and Art History of the University of Utah in 2008, where he heads the Photography and Digital Imaging area. That same year he was awarded the Salt Lake City Mayor’s Award for his contributions to the arts. Edward Bateman’s work is recognized internationally for his innovative use of technologies and for stretching the boundaries of the mediums he works in.

Nazraeli Press released Mechanical Brides of the Uncanny (2009), a limited-edition book of his work which is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, and George Eastman Museum among others. Bateman has been widely written about including a 2012 profile in the UK publication Printmaking Today, the authorized journal of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. He has been included in a half dozen textbooks, including Seizing the Light: A Social and Aesthetic History of Photography (2017). He is the co-author with Robert Hirsch of Light and Lens: Thinking About Photography in the Digital Age.

Bateman’s work has been exhibited in over twenty-eight countries and is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Victoria & Albert Museum, The China Printmaking Museum, The Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt, and Getty Research Institute, among others. He has twice been short-listed (2014 & 2016) for the Lumen Prize, described by The Guardian Culture Blog (U.K.) as “The world’s preeminent digital art prize.”

Recently, Bateman’s work from his series Yosemite: Seeking Sublime was honored with the Special Award of the Rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk at the Krakow 2021 International Print Triennial in Poland. He has twice been invited to exhibit work (2020, 2022) at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (the New Library of Alexandria) in Egypt. His work has recognized with awards in two categories (2018 and 2021) at the Earth Photo exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society in London.

[ S T A T E M E N T ]

These small landscapes are living environments that grow from the earth – little worlds with both sky and land. Light penetrates their flesh to color these spaces. Like the bigger world, these places sustain and feed us. Filled with the seeds of new life, they are a paradise hidden. My images take us into these secret worlds through small portals that open a way for my lens to enter. One would have to be small indeed to explore these environments of the garden.

In these images, we are the seeds. We need to cultivate a growing awareness that the environment is a place that we are inside – a place of remarkable and unusual beauty. We are part of this small world, and our lives arise from and are intimately connected to it.