Jeanine Michna-Bales is a fine artist working in the medium of photography. Her work explores our fundamentally important relationships – to the land, to other people and to oneself – and how they impact contemporary society. Her work lives at the intersection of curiosity and knowledge, documentary and fine art, past and present, anthropology and sociology, and environmentalism and activism. Her practice is based on in-depth research – taking into account different viewpoints, causes and effects, political climates – and she often incorporates primary source material into her projects.
Michna-Bales’s latest photographic essay on the American Suffrage Movement, Standing Together: Inez Milholland’s Final Campaign for Women’s Suffrage, was featured in the July/August 2020 summer issue of Smithsonian Magazine and the Arts section of The New York Times. An in-depth publication from MW Editions was released in May 2021 and a traveling exhibition will launch in 2022.
A comprehensive publication of the Underground Railroad series, Through Darkness to Light, was released in 2017 by Princeton Architectural Press and includes a foreword by Andrew Young. An accompanying traveling exhibition through Mid-America Arts Alliance is currently touring the country through 2027.
Michna-Bales’s work is in many permanent collections including Archive of Documentary Arts, Duke University, Durham, NC; Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL; Lehigh University Art Galleries, Bethlehem, PA; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Louisiana State University, Hill Memorial Library, Baton Rouge, LA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX; and University of North Texas, Denton, TX.