Jessica Todd Harper

Jessica Todd Harper (born 1975 in Pennsylvania) is an American photographer. She spent much of her childhood wandering around museums with a sketchbook, copying paintings. This traditional artistic preparation took an unexpected course when she started making photographs as a teenager, but the familiar canvases of her childhood heroes—John Singer Sargent, Whistler, Vermeer—still have their influences today: she is interested in making intimate, psychological portraits, where environment plays a large role. Jessica Todd Harper uses portraiture to explore the subtle tensions within daily family interactions and the complexity of human relationships. Her work is grounded in art historical tradition, but with a psychological undercurrent that marks its modernity.
A silver medalist in the Prix de la Photographie in Paris (2014), she was an Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition prizewinner (2016) and selected that same year for the Taylor Wessing Portrait competition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. She has taught at the International Center of Photography and Swarthmore College.