Susan Bryant received her BA in painting from Indiana University and her MFA in photography from Indiana State University. She recently retired as Professor of Art at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, where she taught photography for 38 years. She currently holds Professor Emerita status.
Her personal work includes gelatin silver prints, hand-colored gelatin silver prints, digital photographs, and, beginning in 2011, the 19th century wet plate collodion process which yields glass negatives and positives, tintypes and ambrotypes. In addition to making these one-of-a-kind objects, Susan also integrates the 19th century wet plate process with 21st century digital technology by scanning the plates to create digital prints.
Her work has been included in over 100 (selected) national & international juried and invitational group exhibits and 25 (selected) solo exhibits across the United States. She is the recipient of a Tennessee Arts Commission Fellowship in photography. She is the recipient of the Ovation Award for Individual Artist from the Center for Excellence in Creative Arts, Clarksville, TN. She is the recipient of two fellowships at the Hambidge Center Artist Residency, one residency at Penland School of Craft and two residencies at A.I.R. Studio Paducah.
Her work has been included in 5 of the past 8 MANIFEST: INPHA: An Annual International Publication of Contemporary Photography, published by Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati (2012-2019). Two of her images were published in the 2017 Creative Quarterly 49, an International Journal of Art & Design and 2 others were published in CQ59, 2020. Her work is highlighted in an article in the June 2017 issue of Nashville Arts magazine. Her work is included in numerous public and corporate collections including the Tennessee State Museum, the Knoxville Museum of Art, and Vanderbilt Medical Center. She was represented by the Cumberland Gallery in Nashville for 30 years until its closing in 2019.
