Penelope Umbrico

Penelope Umbrico (January 31, 1957) is an artist / photographer best known for appropriating images found using search engines and picture sharing websites. Her work has been published in books, exhibited and she has received awards.

Umbrico received her O.A.C.A. at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, Canada in 1980. She obtained her M.F.A. in 1989 at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

In 2010 her exhibition, As Is, at LMAK Projects featured a series of work called Broken Sets (EBay) (2009–2010), which consisted of images of broken LCD television screens that were acquired from pictures posted by eBay sellers trying to sell damaged television sets for parts.

Her project Suns from Flickr started in 2006 when she found 541,795 pictures of sunsets searching the word “sunset” on the photo-sharing web site Flickr while looking for the most photographed subject (which the sunset turned out to be). She took just the suns from these pictures and made Kodak snapshot prints of them.

For each installation, the title reflects the number of hits she gets searching "sunset" on Flickr at the time – for example, the first installation was “541,795 Suns From Flickr” in 2006; subsequent installations were: “2303057 Suns From Flickr (Partial) 9/25/07” (2007); “3,221,717 Suns From Flickr (Partial) 3/31/08” (2008); “5,911,253 Suns From Flickr (Partial) 8/03/09” (2009) - the title itself becoming a comment on the ever increasing use of web-based photo communities and a reflection of the collective content there.

Her work has been published in the New York Times Magazine, on the cover and inside spreads accompanying "Ghosts In the Machine". In March 2012, Art in America featured Umbrico's work on the cover and inside along with a short essay by the artist.

She has served as a member of faculty at Bard College's Summer MFA (Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts) (Chair of MFA Photography from 2004–2010), and she is a core faculty member at the School of Visual Arts MFA Photography Video and Related Media in NYC.

...
Wikipedia