Far From All That Allows: Caroline Tompkins

Tompkins has exhibited nationally and internationally, with her work featured on the BBC, Vogue, and The New York Times among many others. Caroline worked as a photo editor at Bloomberg Businessweek for five years before leaving to pursue her own practice in 2019. She is currently a professor at the School of Visual Arts as well as a freelance photographer for editorial and commercial clients. Caroline's photographs explore issues of female sexuality, localism, and the sincerity within them. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

“The Photographing of America is a large order — read at all literally, the phrase would be an absurdity,” wrote Robert Frank in his application for a Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography in 1954.

Zak Krevitt, Molly Matalon, Corey Olsen, Pat O’Malley, Tim Schutsky, and Caroline Tompkins, six contemporary photographers following in Frank’s footsteps, are well aware of the inherent absurdity of photographing the entire United States. Instead of taking on the task alone, they are going at it together, working in collaboration while honing their individual perspectives. And in the process, they are forming a new wave in American photography. Graduates of the School of Visual Arts’ (SVA) BFA Photography program, the members of this group solidified steadfast bonds while still in college, seeking out community and connections whenever possible.