Stefan Petranek

As an image based artist Stefan Petranek (b. 1977) works across mediums that range from historic photographs to video sculptures that combine digital projection technologies onto a variety of 3D forms and surfaces. Working with subjects that range from genetics to climate change, his work explores how contemporary culture, especially through advances in science and technology, affects our perception of what nature has become. Influenced by his former training as a biologist, he harnesses the camera’s potential as both a tool of rationality and expression to reflect on humanity’s complex relationship with nature and in turn ourselves.

Petranek’s photographic and video work have been exhibited widely in the U.S. as well as appearing internationally. Recently awarded the 2018 Christel DeHaan Artist of Distinction Award, his Brain Tumor Diaries, Genotyping and Genetic Portrait Project series have garnered notable attention including a review by Lenscratch in 2016. Following CODEX, an exhibition of his Genetic-based artwork at Tulla Culture Center in Albania in 2015, his Genetic Portrait Project Initiative was published in Front Line Genomics Magazine and work from his Genotyping series appeared in Manifest Press’ contemporary fine art photography book INPHA3 in 2016. He currently resides with his family in Indianapolis where he is an Associate Professor of Photography and Intermedia at Indiana University’s Herron School of Art & Design.