Photographer, marriage and family therapist and Utah State University alum Kimberly Anderson was on the USU campus in early March to give a presentation on her work. Her presentation, “Transitioning Within Landscapes: The Photography of Kimberly Anderson,” touched on her work as a photographer interwoven with her identity as a transgender woman.
It included landscape photographs taken during her transition and a later series of salt-print photographs of the Great Salt Lake using actual salt from the lake itself. This event was presented by the USU Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art (NEHMA) and sponsored by the USU Inclusion Center, the USU Center for Intersectional Gender Studies and Research, the USU Department of Psychology and the USU Department of Art + Design.
Kimberly Anderson is also the photographer and author of the Mama Dragon Story Project, featuring portraits and autobiographical essays from over 135 Mormon mothers of LGBTQ+ children. Anderson’s work is part of NEHMAs collection and included in the exhibition Sky Above, Earth Below, which runs through July 31. (The museum is closed to the public at present, due to COVID-19 concerns). Born and raised in northern Utah, Anderson earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s of fine arts from Utah State University. As a transgender woman who was raised in an orthodox Mormon home and was married for twenty years to a woman with whom she shares two children, Anderson is—in her own words—“embarking on the second half of her life reinventing nearly every aspect of who she is.”
On Wednesday’s Access Utah our guests will include Kimberly Anderson and NEHMA Executive Director and Chief Curator Katie Lee-Koven.
