EXCERPTS: Reviews, Articles, Essays
Jenny Lynn’s work is preternaturally aware of the correspondences, oppositions, echoes and mazes that constitute our sense of visual reality. In the tradition of the Surrealists who’ve so inspired her, however, the occasional rhymes in her photographs are invariably oblique or inexact -- the equivalent of slant rhymes in a poem….Like a surrealist scavenger, like Dali, Magritte or Man Ray, she presents her paradoxes and symbols and then abandons them to their fate as icons of mystery. -- Richard Burgin, from “Icons of Mystery,” introduction to PhotoPlay. Author and Founding Editor, Boulevard magazine
Her work is reminiscent of the exquisite craft displayed by Gabriel Garcia Marquez's magical use of language, time, place, and imagination. -- William Larson, noted photographer (re PhotoPlay)
What is stimulating is...she seems to have a pack of images, like tarot cards, that she shuffles to make different combinations. -- William Zimmer from "Personal Styles Centered on Enigma", The New York Times
Jenny Lynn creates some of the most intriguing and unsettling photographs I have seen in years...It's the strangeness quotient...that catches the eye, and holds it...the originality of Lynn's work gives strangeness a fresh frisson. -- Edward J. Sozanski, art critic, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Her strategic and often startling interventions with scissors and drawing tools cleverly subvert and play with issues of gender, reality, and the unconscious. -- Jill Snyder, Executive Director of MOCA Cleveland, and former Director of The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, from the catalogue “Beyond Narrative, The Photographs of Jenny Lynn and Jill Mathis”
Jenny Lynn uses photography as a means to find, identify, and collect objects that become her own personal symbols or characters in her ongoing narrative. Evident throughout her work is the fine line between what is real and what is not. Although she begins with images found in the physical world, she alters or assembles them into collages, montages, or sequences that challenge reality to exist simultaneously with artifice and that also invite us, as viewers, to drop our guard and join her game. --Virginia Heckert, from “(S)elective Affinities,” essay for PhotoPlay. Curator and Department Head, Department of Photographs, J. Paul Getty Museum
A predilection for clean design and scaled-back storytelling is evident in the work of...Jenny Lynn...she knows how to lend just the right aura of mystery to her prints and collages...that have a Wunderkammer quality...surreal, disparate images feel like they had long been swirling around in the artist’s mind until she saw their potential for storytelling. -- Deborah Ross, Visual Art Source
[Jenny] Lynn’s imagery dissolves the distinctions between the everyday and the dream....[it’s] a kind of mining and delving into memory and psyche. -- Tom Beck, Chief Curator, Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
What wonderfully strange photographs Jenny Lynn takes! -- Duane Michals (on PhotoPlay)
A stunning anthology of visual ideas. -- Ralph Gibson (on PhotoPlay)
Lynn moves effortlessly from one genre to another...heightening the potential of each image as she plans its final appearance. — Rosanna Checci, from "Jenny Lynn 'Personal Myths' portfolio," ZOOM International magazine
When you look at her work you get a feeling. You respond to it emotionally. You don't know why, but you know it's significant. -- Carre Bevilacqua, Executive Director, Graphistock, from “Jenny Lynn’s Surreal World”, Photo District News
The world is full of signs and signposts, single words that inform us of our location or direct our actions. In Jenny Lynn's short animation, she takes us on a journey through an alphabet of signs. Like a snappy slide show, It's a Sign solicits an anticipation that is humorously disrupted by an ending that is not an end. -- Julien Robson, Curator of Contemporary Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
She's a tremendous artist that in the next few years will be recognized as one of the top photographers in this country. -- Michel Roux, Creator of the Absolut Vodka Campaign, from “Jenny Lynn’s Surreal World”, by Bret Senft, Photo District News
Her work is gorgeous, funny, magical. -- Bill Tonelli, former editor at Esquire magazine
Her artwork...is very fresh...and her flexibility...she's not just a one-trick pony.
-- Susan Mitchell, Art Director, Vintage Books, from “Jenny Lynn Book Covers”, PhotoDesign magazine
In the age of of the $1K iPhone, virtually anyone can snap a well-composed photograph to share with the social media world. UNFILTERED is an exhibition of vintage SX70 Polaroid photography art created by Jenny Lynn in the 1970s and 1980s. These photographs do not rely on fancy image stabilization technology, user-friendly photo editing software, or Instagram filters. The artist's composition and use of light combined with her surrealist aesthetic makes this exhibition a must-see. Amateur and professional photography enthusiasts alike will ask themselves "how did she do that?" using instant Polaroid film. -- Ruben Luna, Workshop Underground