Kenneth Josephson is recognized as an early and influential practitioner of Conceptual photography. His black and white images famously layer pictures within pictures, focusing on the act of picture-making, offering playful commentary on photographic truth and illusion, and using the photograph itself to question the veracity of the medium.
Josephson earned a BFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1957, where he studied under Minor White. In 1960, he earned an MS from the Institute of Design of the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, where he was strongly influenced by Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. Josephson was a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1967 -1997), and a founding member of the Society for Photographic Education. He is the receipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship (1972), and two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships (1975 and 1979). His work is in the collections worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian, Washington D.C.; the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Bibliotheque National, Paris; and Fotografiska Museet, Stockholm. A retrospective monograph of Josephson’s work was published by the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999. —Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco