Jan Staller

Staller attended Bard College at Simon's Rock liberal arts college, Great Barrington, MA, where he obtained his Associate of Arts degree in 1971. He went on to attend Maryland Institute, Baltimore, MD and obtained his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1975.

For more than 35 years, Staller’s photography has traced a trajectory from uncanny urban landscapes to bold abstracted studies of industrial materials. Moving to Manhattan in 1976, Staller began to photograph the world closest to his home: the West Side Highway. It was there Staller, working with a mixture of natural and artificial light, Staller made his influential twilight images of New York City. Over the years, he has expanded the regions of his work. In 1980, he photographed in Europe. By the mid 1980s Staller began photographing in New Jersey. During this time, he developed his technique of using powerful stadium lighting to illuminate the landscape. Staller also took more distant photo trips: around United States in 1989, 2001, 2004; Asia in 1996, 1998, 1999, 2004. Despite the potentially exotic subject matter to be found in distant lands Staller’s travel photographs were remarkably consistent with the work he made closer to home.