Carla Anderson
American; Female; born 1943
Carla Anderson was born in Philadelphia and moved to Detroit while still a child. She grew up in a left wing family who had interests in the arts. As a child she slunk around with a Brownie camera pretending to be a wildlife photographer while all the while attempting to photograph squirrels. In her teens and as a young adult Carla studied theatre. It wasn’t until her late 20’s that she made a commitment to photography. Starting as a street photographer Carla soon began to photograph vernacular architecture. In the mid 1980’s she began her first long term project. Traveling the rural South Carla photographed vernacular architecture, signage, roadside memorials, and outsider art.
This project lasted fifteen years at which time she moved into the landscape. This current body of work began to take form in 2006 and has wound through various stages and growth since that time. Much of the influence for this work comes from painting. In 2020, in conjunction with writer Bill Harris, she published Sight—Sound: 10 haiku by Bill Harris after Carla Anderson photographs . This handmade book, printed in letterpress with photographs tipped onto the pages, is the first of its kind to come out of Detroit.
Carla Anderson’s first venture into the American South was in 1989, and while she found the history she’d been looking for, she was also struck that the past was quickly fading. Anderson’s fascination with the aged and weathered encompasses both structural remains more than a century old and a number of less imposing, presumably still-functional, small time-worn buildings. The harmony of her color palette gives a gentle, sometimes dreamy but always beautiful, view of a landscape that may not exist for another generation. Her attention to regional character comes to the forefront when she shoots manifestations of local culture like a road-side memorial, a trio of white-washed crosses grouped together, or the eclectic sculptural decorations that absorb the entire front yard of a private home.
Carla Anderson was born on October 20, 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was awarded a BFA in photography from the Center for Creative Studies (now the College for Creative Studies) in Detroit (1976), and an MFA in photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art (1978). She has received the Calumet Emerging Photographers Award by The Friends of Photography (2000), as well as the Artists in the Public Schools Grant (1982) and two Creative Artists Grants (1984 and 1987) from the Michigan Council for the Arts. Her work is in the collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit Historical Museum, Kalamazoo Art Institute, and the Library of Congress.
