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Vaughn Sills

Cambridge, MA

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  1. Dogwood, Northumberland Strait by Vaughn Sills, Image 1.

    Vaughn Sills

    Dogwood, Northumberland Strait, 2020

    Archival Pigment Print

    14 x 21 in

In my photography, I explore two areas that often overlap. I’m interested in how we live and develop culture within the natural world and how we influence that world; I look at the ways that the environment, both the natural and the built, help to create our individual experiences of reality. I've also focused on the experience of people who have been marginalized, denied their voices, or significantly hampered by who we are — women, the poor, and people of color. My photographs explore how our physical and social environments influence and reflect our deepest inner experiences.

My photographs have been exhibited in art, history and botanic museums and galleries; they are in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, DeCordova Museum, Harvard Art Museum, the Polaroid Collection, and the Eaton Vance Collection, among others. Several significant awards have helped support my practice and recognized my work; twice my work was awarded with an Artist’s Fellowship in Photography by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Other grants and awards have come from the Artadia Dialogue for Art and Culture, the Polaroid Foundation, and The New England Foundation for the Arts. My books, Places for the Spirit, Traditional African American Gardens (2010) and One Family (2001) have earned awards from the Garden Writers Association and the Magazine Association for the Southeast.

I live and work in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Prince Edward Island, Canada — where I not only photograph, but quilt and garden following in the footsteps and learning from the many women before me. Most recently, I’ve taught at the Griffin Museum of Photography, and before that at Simmons University, where I am an Associate Professor Emerita of Photography.