| Logan admits to a self-consciousness in her work that had kept her early subject matter restricted primarily to landscape scenes. Her work as a documentary photographer, doing photojournalism throughout the United States, the Caribbean, and India, and as a graphic designer had reinforced this emphasis. In 1983, however, Logan resolved to put the human figure into her repertoire and created the photodocumentary "The Artist Portrait Series," in which she photographed prominent black artists such as Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence, and Romare Bearden. She began the series because of her philosophy of art as an educational tool and through a desire "to document the careers of highly accomplished black visual artists." It was this work which was awarded a grant from The New York State Council on the Arts in 1985 and was published in a book by Southern Illinois University Press in 2001with a grant from the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation. This work was presented in a solo exhibition in Amsterdam, Holland in March of 2002 at the International Institute for Social History. Always present in Logan's photographs is an aesthetic of beauty, of drama, and of mood. Her photographic studies of nudes, for example, which she began to create in the mid-'80s, are erotic and sensual, yet with a classical sensibility similar to some of the work of Robert Mapplethorpe whom Logan much admires. Logan, who is a retired Associate Professor of Cinema & Photography at Southern Illinois University, completed her MFA at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago (1993). She has taught photography and graphic design at Elmhurst College, Elmhurst, Ill, (1992- 1995) and Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Mich. (1989-1992), has been exhibiting since the early '70s, when she emerged as a promising photographer from Paul Caponigro's Apeiron Workshop. In Millerton, NY, she has shown at The Smithsonian Institution, Just Above Midtown Gallery, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Kenkeleba Gallery, Cinque Gallery, the National Urban League Gallery 62, the Clocktower, and the Jamaica Arts Center, among others. The Harlem State Office Building, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Bellevue Hospital Center, N.Y. City, have Logan's work in their permanent collections. Logan has also shown in Michigan, Texas, New Jersey, Iowa, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania museums and galleries. Her work of digitally manipulated imagery was honored with two Illinois Arts Council Fellowships in 1998 and 2001. In 2001 Southern Illinois University Press published The Artist Portrait Series. The book features environmental protraits of 60 African American Artists, many of whom have subsequently passed away. |
