For more than six decades, Uelsmann created seamless surreal photographs by combining multiple negatives in the darkroom. Long before the advent of digital imaging, his visionary work expanded the expressive possibilities of photography and continues to inspire artists around the world.

Born in Detroit on June 11, 1934, Jerry Uelsmann earned his B.F.A. from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1957 and both his M.S. and M.F.A. degrees from Indiana University in 1960. Widely regarded as the pioneer of modern darkroom photomontage, Uelsmann joined the faculty of the University of Florida in Gainesville in 1960. He became Graduate Research Professor of Art in 1974, was awarded an honorary doctorate by the university in 2012, and retired from teaching in 1998.

Uelsmann received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967 and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1972. He was a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, a founding member of The Society for Photographic Education, and a former trustee of Friends of Photography.

Throughout his career, Uelsmann’s work was featured in more than 100 solo exhibitions in the United States and abroad. His photographs are held in the permanent collections of major museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto.