Marsha Burns was born in 1945 in Seattle, Washington. She began as a painter, studying at the University of Washington (1963-65) and then at the University of Massachusetts (1967-69) moving to photography in 1972. while living in Texas.
She moved to Seattle and, inspired by a visit to Berlin in 1984, Burns started making portraits of young adults who chose to set themselves apart from the mainstream, first in her native Seattle and later in other cities. "The people I choose to photograph are often those for whom negative or tragically simple attitudes have been formed by the majority of society," she writes. "In an age of technology and urbanization I am drawn to the boundaries, to people whose existence is self-defined."
Marsha Burns’ photographs are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY), the Seattle Art Museum (Seattle, WA), the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), and the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, the Netherlands).
She moved to Seattle and, inspired by a visit to Berlin in 1984, Burns started making portraits of young adults who chose to set themselves apart from the mainstream, first in her native Seattle and later in other cities. "The people I choose to photograph are often those for whom negative or tragically simple attitudes have been formed by the majority of society," she writes. "In an age of technology and urbanization I am drawn to the boundaries, to people whose existence is self-defined."
Marsha Burns’ photographs are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY), the Seattle Art Museum (Seattle, WA), the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), and the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, the Netherlands).
