Donna J. Wan was born in Taiwan and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She earned her BA in Economics, Phi Beta Kappa, from Stanford University and MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2008. She grew up in New York City and only in the past several years has developed an interest in the natural world. Her photographs reflect her continual search to understand how perceptions and identities are shaped by the landscape.
Her work has been shown at the New Mexico Museum of Art; RISD Museum of Art; Museum of Photographic Arts, Silver Eye Center for Photography, Klompching Gallery and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She has been named a Magenta Foundation 2007 Flash Forward Emerging Photographer and a 2012 and 2014 Critical Mass Top 50 Finalist. Her awards include The CENTER 2012 Project Launch honorable mention, 2012 Lucie Foundation/APA Scholarship grant, 2013 Kolga Award, The CENTER 2013 Gallerist’s Choice Award 3rd Place, and the Silver Eye 2014 International Fellowship.
Her work has appeared in Fraction Magazine, Flak Photo, Lenscratch, PDN, Forward Thinking Museum, Time Out Chicago, Archivo, Beautiful Decay, Profifoto, La Journal De La Photographie, and Conscientious. In 2009, she was awarded an artist’s residency at The Center for Photography at Woodstock and was invited by Catherine Opie to lecture at UCLA. Her work is included in the collections of BNY Mellon Bank, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Pulitzer Prize winning author Richard Ford.
In her most recent body of work, the Taiwanese-born, Stanford educated and San Francisco based photographer, Donna J. Wan has dedicated herself to exploring an often shuttered and taboo subject - the taking of one’s own life. A former sufferer of severe postpartum depression who once considered the same path, Ms. Wan recovered and committed herself to exploring this most intimate and difficult avenue by unblinkingly pursuing “suicide destinations” - those most sought after vistas where lives had ended. Therapeutically, she followed the paths of those who chose these spots, guided by her own experience and an enduring need to understand. From shortly after the birth of her daughter in early 2011 until mid-2012, Ms. Wan’s illness lingered. In trying to recall the path that led her to the project, sh...