Paul Caponigro

American, born 1932

BiographyPaul Caponigro (b. 1932) is considered one of America’s foremost landscape photographers who is highly regarded for his symbolic depictions of the natural world. Working with large format cameras in black and white over the span of sixty years, Caponigro seeks to infuse natural phenomena with spiritual meaning and convey the mysterious qualities of the places and objects that he photographs. Some of his notable subjects include Stonehenge and other Celtic megaliths of England and Ireland, the sacred gardens and shrines of Japan, and the woodlands of New England.
Caponigro initially studied music at Boston University College of Music in 1950 and often cites his training as a classical pianist as an important influence on his photographic practice. His photography career began while stationed in San Francisco during his army service in the early fifties at which time he studied under Benjamin Chinn, and subsequently with Minor White in Rochester, NY (1957) at the Rochester Institute of Technology, before becoming a photography instructor at Boston University in 1960.
Caponigro has been recognized with several awards and fellowships including two Guggenheim Fellowships in 1966 and 1975; three National Endowment for the Arts grants in 1971, 1975, and 1982; and the Centenary Medal from the Royal Photographic Society in 2001. Since his first solo exhibition at the George Eastman House in 1958 he has exhibited continuously, including the recent two-person exhibition Bruce Davidson/Paul Caponigro: Two American Photographers in England and Ireland, which traveled from the Yale University Center for British Art to the Huntington Library (2014-15). His work can be found in many collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Minneapolis Institute of Art; and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

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