| B.A. Van Sise | |
| Alma Mater: | Fordham University |
| Occupation: | Photographer |
B.A. Van Sise is an American photographer and author. He has worked as a travel photographer, and collections of his fine art photography has been exhibited in public installations by US museums.
B.A. Van Sise is a graduate of Fordham University, with degrees in both Visual Arts and Modern Languages.[1] He has produced photo essays for publications including the Village Voice.[2] [3] Van Sise is also a travel photographer,[4] [5] through various publications and as a Nikon/AFAR travel photography ambassador.[6]
In 2016 he assembled the exhibition entitled Children of Grass.[7] He started the project by taking photographs of contemporary well-known poets in elaborate scenes and poses, matching those photos with the poet's own work.[8] Each of the poets assembled have claimed to be inspired at some point by Walt Whitman, and these photos will be exhibited in places including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.[9]
In 2017 Van Sise exhibited the first outdoor public installation to be held at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, entitled Eyewitness: Photographs. The exhibition was composed of 31 portraits of Holocaust survivors living in New York City.[10] Each portrait was expanded to 13 feet high and five feet wide, printed on vinyl.[11] In 2018 he exhibited his collection Sweat at the Peabody Essex Museum. Each of the photos exhibited a before and after photo of an athlete, first as they normally looked, and next just as they completed a training session.[12] Athletes included members of the New York Knicks, New York Cosmos, the Gotham Girls Roller Derby League, and competitors in the New York City Marathon.[13] In 2019, his exhibition A Portrait of Poetry was shown at the Center for Creative Photography and the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona.[14]
Van Sise is also known for his practice of creating only one photograph per day.[15] His daily photographs were the subject of a retrospective display at the Kansas City Public Library between 2019 and 2020 in the exhibition One Second.[16]
Van Sise also published the poetry book Children of Grass: A Portrait of American Poetry in 2019, which received an IPPY award in 2020.[17] The Times of London also named it one of their 2019 “books of the year”.[18] The Booklist wrote of the work that, “Van Sise has created a singular and irresistible volume of poetry and collaborative visual lyricism that will enthrall poetry lovers and break down the hesitation of those wary of the form.”[19]