Jo Whaley

Jo Whaley (b. 1950) is an American photographer whose work merges the visual languages of painting, theater, and photography into highly composed, color-saturated still lifes. Known for her carefully constructed stage-like environments, Whaley draws heavily from her background in scenic design and fine art to create photographs that are both poetic and theatrical. Her compositions are rich with metaphor, dramatic lighting, and layered meaning—inviting viewers into a world where objects transcend their materiality to embody themes of nature, mortality, and illusion.

Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Whaley earned advanced degrees in art and photography from the University of California, Berkeley by 1980. Initially trained as a painter, she supported herself by working as a scenic artist for the San Francisco Opera and other regional theater companies. This experience in set design profoundly shaped her photographic aesthetic, as she began creating miniature theatrical environments in her studio using hand-painted backdrops, props, and expressive lighting techniques. Her photographs fuse formal painterly concerns—composition, color, light—with the precision and immediacy of the camera.

Whaley gained national recognition for The Theater of Insects, a touring exhibition that debuted at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., and later traveled to the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego and the Henry Fox Talbot Museum at Lacock Abbey in the United Kingdom. Accompanied by a monograph published by Chronicle Books, the series presents luminous still lifes pairing taxidermied insects with evocative settings, examining the intersection of art, science, and the fragile beauty of the natural world.

Earlier series such as Natura Morta, which earned her a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship in 1994, and Global Folly, a series of Polaroid 20×24 nude studies made between 1989 and 1993, further exemplify her commitment to blending traditional fine art practices with photographic innovation.

Her work has been widely exhibited and is included in the permanent collections of major institutions such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She maintains studios in both Berkeley, California and Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she continues to create new work that explores the boundaries between reality and illusion, nature and artifice.