"The Home Stage" is a body of work about childhood and having children. The title
references the home-bound lifestyle of families with small children as well as the idea
that home is the stage on which children first learn to live. In his foreword to the
accompanying monograph published by Damiani in late fall 2014, Alain de Botton writes
“Harper recognizes the worth of a modest moment and marshalls her genius to bring its
qualities to our notice. Her astonishing, beautiful and quietly stunning images proudly
contradict our prejudices by foregrounding all that we are likely to have missed.”
Awards Jessica Todd Harper’s photographs have been discussed in The New Yorker, Photo District News, Camera Austria, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, among others. Harper’s first monograph, Interior Exposure, (Damiani 2008) was selected by O, The Oprah Magazine as well as PDN as a top book recommendation, was shortlisted at the NY Photo Festival for Best Book and won a first place Lucie Award. Her work recently appeared in museums across the country in both “Masterpieces of American Photography”, George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film’s traveling exhibit, and in “The Art of Caring” The New Orleans Museums of Art’s traveling exhibit. She has had solo shows at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Cohen Amador Gallery in NYC, The Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle, The Allentown Art Museum, and at Galerie Confluence in France, among others. She was a project competition winner at Center, Santa Fe and one of “PDN’s 30: Our Choice of Emerging Photographers to Watch”. Editorial clients include New York Magazine, O, The Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, Die Zeit Literatur and Newsweek. Her work won a first place for the 2010 Society of Publication Designers competition. A New York Photo Festival award winner (Best Fine Art Image 2008) and a 2009 recipient of a PA Council for the Arts Grant, Harper has been invited to talk about her work at such places as The International Center for Photography, New York, NY; Google Headquarters, Palo Alto, CA and Aperture Gallery, New York, NY. Harper has taught at both The ICP and Swarthmore College. Her next book (Daminai Editore) is due out in Fall 2014 and will include a foreword by Alain de Botton and an essay by Alison Nordstrom. She is represented by Rick Wester Fine Art, NYC.
