William Clift (photographer)

Clift was born in Boston in 1944; his uncle was the actor Montgomery Clift.[1] Clift took up photography when he was ten years old using a Polaroid camera, then to buy his own camera spent summers caddying and finding golf balls and taking Coke bottles to recycle.[2] He did no formal training in photography and spent only one year at Columbia University. At 18 he attempted to protect his older sister from the legal consequences of her fatal shooting of her boyfriend.[3]

With Willem Nyland, Clift studied the Greek-Armenian mystic philosopher George Gurdjieff.

Clift's first instruction in photography was a workshop with Paul Caponigro in 1959, when he was fifteen and he has worked professionally since 1963, six years with Steve Gersh as his business partner in Cambridge. He was a founding member of the Association of Heliographers (1963–65) with Carl Chiarenza, Walter Chappell, Paul Caponigro, Nicholas Nixon, Paul Petricone, and Marie Cosindas.[4] Since then, two of his books (2007 and 2012) were designed by Eleanor Caponigro. His early projects included photographing a 1970 series for the Massachusetts Council on the Arts, the old Boston City Hall, the Hudson River Valley,[5] and courthouses around the country.[6][7]

Clift moved to Santa Fe in 1971 with his wife, Vida who after 10 years at Harvard taught at St. John’s while Clift began documenting the landscape of the region, including La Bajada, Canyon de Chelly, and Shiprock, the latter being paired in his photobook with imagery of Mont-St. Michel in France.[8] In 1977 to 1984 he made portraits of American artist Georgia O’Keeffe and her assistant Juan Hamilton[9] and also in 1984 returned to using the Polaroid camera in making portraits of his daughter for A Particular World.

Clift lives in La Tierra and his studio-cum- gallery is at 203 E. Palace Ave. in the Sierra Vista-Hickox neighbourhood.[2]

Clift is the recipient of two Guggenheim fellowships, two National Endowment for the Arts grants,[10] and a Governor’s Award for the Arts.

As well as in other institutions, Clift has exhibited in five shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York;

• American Landscapes July 9–October 4, 1981
• Reinstallation of the Collection, October 23, 1980 – January 3, 1982
• Edward Steichen Photography Center Reinstallation, December 21, 1979
• Mirrors and Windows: American Photography since 1960, July 26–October 2, 1978
• Courthouse, April 12–July 10, 1977[6][10]

• J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
• National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
• Smithsonian American Art Museum[11]

• Ulmann, Doris; Coles, Robert. New heaven and a new earth. 1974 (1974), The darkness and the light : photographs, Aperture, ISBN 978-0-912334-60-8
• Clift, William; Kane, Paul (2012), Mont St. Michel and Shiprock, Santa Fe, New Mexico Pearmain Press, ISBN 978-0-9797524-3-8[12]
• Clift, William; Kane, Paul (1993), A Hudson landscape, photographs, Autographed Books Collection, William Clift Editions, ISBN 978-0-9618165-1-3
• Clift, William; Amon Carter Museum of Western Art; Art Institute of Chicago (1987), Certain places, William Clift Editions, ISBN 978-0-9618165-0-6[13]
• Kennedy, William-; Clift, William; New York (State). Temporary State Commission on the Restoration of the Capitol (1986), The Capitol in Albany, Aperture Book, ISBN 978-0-89381-209-6

• Artist website