George A. Tice

American, born 1938

BiographyIn a career spanning over 60 years, George Tice (b. 1938) explored the evolving American landscape primarily in and around his native New Jersey. He is highly regarded for his rich, exquisitely printed black-and-white photographs of urban and suburban subjects, including roadside architecture, main streets, and rural communities.

Primarily self-taught, Tice joined a camera club at age 14 and worked at a Newark, New Jersey portrait studio before joining the Navy as a Photographer's Mate in 1956. While enlisted, his widely published photograph of a 1959 helicopter explosion aboard the USS WASP caught the eye of Edward Steichen (1879-1973), then curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, who requested a print of the image for the museum. After leaving the service in 1959, Tice started his own successful portrait business and met Lee Witkin, helping establish the Witkin Gallery in New York (1969). He also gained recognition for his darkroom skill during this time, working as a master printer for many prominent photographers, including Steichen and Ralph Steiner (1899-1986).

Tice's success in these ventures allowed him to pursue his personal work full-time after 1970. He is best known for his evocative photographic essays, often published in book format, that successfully blend his technical prowess and sensitivity toward his subjects to create a deep sense of place. Tice has published 18 photobooks, including his first, Fields of Peace: A Pennsylvania German Album (1970), as well as Paterson (1972) and Urban Landscapes: A New Jersey Portrait (1975). Indicative of his deep interest in his subjects, each of these books has a more recent sequel in which he continues to explore each location's ever-changing landscape.

Tice received many awards and grants, including the Grand Prix du Festival d'Arles (1973), a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship (1973), Guggenheim Fellowship (1973-74), and more recently, the Lucie Lifetime Achievement Award (2015). He has consistently exhibited his work at galleries since the 1960s, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art honored him with his first solo museum exhibition in 1972. Other significant shows include at the Photographic Museum of Finland, Helsinki (1985); National Science and Media Museum, Bradford, England (1991); and the International Center of Photography, New York (2002), among other institutions. The exhibition George Tice and Andrew Wyeth: Parallel Visions was on view at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, through January 3, 2021.

Tice's work is in many public and private collections, including the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Art Institute of Chicago; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and the Newark Museum of Art.

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