Born 1962 in Philadelphia, PA
Lives and works in Denver, CO
Joann Brennan’s photographs grapple with the question of how we sustain wildness in a human world. Her work recognizes the paradoxical nature of human efforts to control and conserve wildlife. In her Managing Eden series, Brennan captures stewardship efforts across the country, showing the intimate relationship between scientists and their specimens.
Image Gallery
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Joann Brennan, Mallard Egg Contraception Research, located in the “Simulated Natural Environment Room.” National Wildlife Research Center. Fort Collins, Colorado, 2000 chromogenic print, 20 x 24 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Julie and Robert Lewis, 2010.45.2, © 2000, Joann Brennan
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Joann Brennan, Mallard Egg Research Testing Potential Chemical Contraceptives Designed to Manage Overabundant Canada Goose Populations. National Wildlife Research Center. Fort Collins, Colorado, 2000, chromogenic print, 20 x 24 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by Mrs. Alexander Hamilton Rice, 2010.67, © 2000, Joann Brennan
In her Managing Eden series, Joann Brennan grapples with the question of how we sustain wildness in a human world. Here, Brennan captures the work of scientists who are attempting to control Canada goose populations. Canada geese have become a potential threat to public health in suburban areas where green spaces and artificial waterways offer ideal habitats. Brennan’s image considers the necessity of human intervention to maintain the balance between human needs and those of avian populations.
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Joann Brennan, Peregrine Falcon. Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Zoology Department (over 900 speciments in the collection). Denver, Colorado, 2006, chromogenic print, 20 x 24 in., Courtesy of the artist, © Joann Brennan. Image courtesy of the artist, Denver, CO
In addition to picturing bird conservation in the field, Joann Brennan’s Managing Eden project documents scientists and specimens in museums. The falcon pictured here is in the collection of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Its powerful wing extends upward as reminder of the bird’s former speed and strength. Brennan hopes that images like this will raise appreciation for the valuable role that museums play in the stewardship of nature. The solutions to tomorrow’s environmental crises could lie in the specimen drawers of today’s museums.
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Joann Brennan, Extinct Species, Passenger Pigeon. Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Zoology Department (over 900 speciments in the collection). Denver, Colorado, 2006, chromogenic print, 20 x 24 in., Courtesy of the artist, © Joann Brennan. Image courtesy of the artist, Denver, CO
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Joann Brennan, King Fisher Specimen with Arsenic. Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Zoology Department (over 900 speciments in the collection). Denver, Colorado, 2005, chromogenic print, 20 x 24 in., Courtesy of the artist, © Joann Brennan. Image courtesy of the artist, Denver, CO
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Joann Brennan, Researchers, Exploring Strategies for Managing Black Vulture Populations, Prepare to Draw Blood From a Captured Black Vulture. National Wildlife Research Center. Gainesville, Florida, 2001, chromogenic print, 20 x 24 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by David S. Purvis, 2010.66, © 2000, Joann Brennan
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Joann Brennan speak about her work in the exhibition The Singing and the Silence: Birds in Contemporary Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The exhibition examines mankind's relationship to birds and the natural world through the eyes of twelve major contemporary American artists, including David Beck, Rachel Berwick, Lorna Bieber, Barbara Bosworth, Joann Brennan, Petah Coyne, Walton Ford, Paula McCartney, James Prosek, Laurel Roth Hope, Fred Tomaselli, and Tom Uttech.
Through making this photographic work over twenty years, one thing that I have found to be extraordinary was the complexity of our relationship to nature. We work so hard to find what I think is an artificial balance between having wildness in our backyards and trying to manage it in such a way where we’re comfortable in our environments. And it’s full of paradox when we are intervening, we’re touching wildlife, we’re trapping, banding, collaring wild animals. We’re researching them. And yet, we’re trying to find places where they can be wild and live in free environments. Finding that balance is such an intriguing challenge for us on the planet. I also think it represents something about our stewardship of nature represents something about our ability to manage our own future as human beings on the planet.
Many of the photographs in the “Managing Eden” series actually show scientists, conservationists, people out in the field with their hands-on nature in one way or another, holding it, holding it down, adding collars, and that image has become important to me because it really is a metaphor for the fact that we literally hold the future of wildness in our hands. Our power to bring it back to life and to even cause its extinction is something I’m trying to get at in these photographs and that type of image for me is a metaphor for our total control of nature.
The mallard egg photograph was taken at the National Wildlife Research Center in Fort Collins, Colorado, and this is a research center that’s devoted to really addressing conflicts between human beings and animal species. And because of the fact that we’re now building really beautiful subdivisions and office parks with lots of green space and walkways and water, we’ve really designed perfect habitats for Canada geese.
With designing these perfect habitats has come an increase in the population of Canada geese. The National Center for Wildlife Research is trying to figure out how to manage Canada geese populations in humane ways in response to complaints that people are making about Canada geese. Too many Canada geese in certain environments is not good for human health because they could be defecating on walkways and in waterways where children and families are playing. And so, it does pose something of a threat.
The photograph represents contraceptive testing, and the idea of the contraceptive testing is to create a contraception or a pellet of feed that they can give to Canada Geese in these large populations that they would eat this feed and they would produce eggs that would not have a viable yolk. And so, it’s something that’s controllable, it could happen by the season, it’s not a permanent change to that particular population but after a certain time period those eggs will not be viable. It’s a way of reducing the number of birds in that particular environment and I think it’s fascinating the ways in which we’re seeking humane ways to try to live with wildness in our backyard which is ultimately something that we all want and something that actually needs to be managed in order to find a balance that works to maintain wild populations and to address human concerns.
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Joann Brennan's photographs grapple with the question of how we sustain wildness in a human world. Her work recognizes the paradoxical nature of human efforts to control and conserve wildlife. In her Managing Eden series, Brennan captures stewardship efforts across the country, showing the intimate relationship between scientists and their specimens. Her images were featured in the exhibition The Singing and the Silence: Birds in Contemporary Art.
Barbara invited me to join her photographing in the Northeast. She had an idea to go and photograph hunting, and I joined her. For a year or two we photographed hunting together. We each made different kinds of photographs, but it helped me understand what kind of rigor I should be applying to my creative process. I learned a lot from working with Barbara.
Over time, I began to broaden the scope from hunting to wildlife conservation, looking at specimens in museum collections. The project was really all about trying to understand - what is our relationship to nature? There is always a reference to humanness, human beings,
how we're trying to manage wildlife populations.
At first, when I started photographing a long time ago, I had this idea that nature was lost. That in the future, because of our intense impact on the environment that someday we might not have wildness in our backyards or wild places in the world. As I photographed and met people, I realized that there are amazing experts out there working really hard to try to find this balance between human concerns and wild populations.
Twenty years later in the project I'm hopeful, because I do think the best and brightest minds are working to figure out how we're going to do this, how we're going to live in harmony with nature. It's interesting, because I think living in harmony with nature actually means an amazing amount of artificial management. Artificial in the fact that we do all kinds of things to try to manage wildlife populations, to manipulate habitat for the well-being of wild animals, and I do believe that that's actually critical. I think if we weren't managing nature the way that we are we would absolutely lose it.