Katherine Wolkoff was born in 1976 in Indiana and received her MFA from Yale University, where was the winner of the Richard Dixon Welling Prize.
Wolkoff photographs range from the miniature landscapes of Deer Beds to Birds, a series of silhouettes of taxidermied birds amassed by naturalist and educator Elizabeth Dickens in the early 20th century. Much of her work turns around dichotomies of absence and presence, as in the deer whose sleep is invoked in matted grass on Block Island or the specter of life in the colorless yet dynamic outlines of stuffed birds. At times Wolkoff uses light and perspective to skew our traditional view of an object; other times she confronts a scene with forthright, often understated directness, allowing its unmediated presence to convey a strangeness that is by turns eerie and comforting.
Wolkoff’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally including the QPN Festival, France; Aperture Gallery, New York; and Palais de Tokyo, France. Her works are included in the collections of the Addison Gallery of Art, the Norton Museum of Art and the Yale University Library, and they have been featured in publications including the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and Artforum. She was nominated for the Prix Pictet Prize in 2008.