News Story

Photography Professor Receives Guggenheim Fellowship

April 17, 2015—Terri Weifenbach, who teaches photography in the Department of Art and Art History, has received a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. She received the fellowship for her project “Cloud Physics.”

Guggenheim Fellowships are awarded through two annual competitions: one for citizens and permanent residents of the United States and Canada, and one for citizens and permanent residents of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The fellowships are “intended for men and women who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.” Each year, the foundation receives between 3,500 and 4,000 applications for approximately 200 fellowships.

Weifenbach received her award in the U.S. and Canada competition. Cloud Physics is “about what can be measured and what cannot, what can be seen outright and what cannot be seen.” The project addresses “science and climate” as well as “the intersection of reason and sensibility.” Weifenbach began working on Cloud Physics in 2014 and is scheduled finish in 2016, when the fellowship ends.

A native of Washington, DC, Weifenbach attended the University of Maryland before spending a dozen years living in New Mexico and California. Her first book, In Your Dreams, was published in 1997; she has since published 14 more titles.

Weifenbach joined Georgetown two years ago; she has also held teaching positions at American University and the Corcoran College of Art and Design. She has had numerous one-person exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and Japan and published widely in periodicals such as Audubon, Esquire, and The New Yorker. Her work can be found in international collections such as the Center for Creative Photography in Arizona and in Germany’s Sprengel Museum Hannover.

To see more of Weifenbach’s work or learn more about her books and publications, visit her website