Dorothy Kerper Monnelly

Member since 2020

Photographing in black and white for several decades, Monnelly showed her photographs throughout the country from 2013 through 2017 with photographers Ansel Adams and Ernest Brooks ll. The show, entitled “Fragile Waters”, was conceived in 2013 by Jeanne Adams in response to the BP oil spill, and highlights the significance of water in its many forms and locations. In June, 2021, several of her photographs will be shown in “Vital Waters”, opening in Colorado.

Monnelly’s first book, “Between Land and Sea, The Great Marsh” (2006), was just republished in 2020, with an introduction by Terry Tempest Williams. This book focuses on her home environment, the Ipswich saltmarsh. In her second book, “For My Daughters”, she paired her photographs of the natural world with her mother’s poetry, creating a dialog between photo and poem, mother and daughter, time and place. Her third book, “Waterforms”, (Verlag Kettler, 2016) continued her focus on capturing the beauty and transformative power of water, presenting a compelling collection of abstract compositions. …for without these photographs most of us would very probably never have seen such truly stunning scenes.” - Hans Durrer, F-STOP online photography magazine, April 23, 2017.

Through her long career, Monnelly has photographed for several land conservation groups and was awarded an Audubon A for her contribution to land conservation. She was also an Artist in Residence at Acadia National Park in Maine. The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA commissioned Monnelly to photographed the Great Marsh landscape with her 8x10 camera for the creation of a Great Marsh wall mural.

Monnelly’s large format silver gelatin prints are in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. and are also held in several major museum collections nation wide. In 2012 her Ice Pattern Series was exhibited at Photo Vernissage in St. Petersburg, Russia. Her photographs have been exhibited in galleries from Maine and New York City to Seattle and Hawaii. She has shared and discussed her photography at numerous locations including Photo LA and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. Many of her photographs are in private collections.

“She shows me the uncommon in the common, the extraordinary in the ordinary, the universe in the pattern.” –Thoreau scholar J. Parker Huber

Dorothy Kerper Monnelly is represented by photokunst.

Dorothy Monnelly's website