About

Jill Mathis is an American photographer whose work explores the relationship between perception, memory, place, and the evolving landscape of contemporary culture. Blending documentary observation with conceptual and fine art approaches, her photographs often move between representation and abstraction, inviting viewers to reconsider the familiar and uncover meaning in overlooked details.

Born and raised in Texas, Mathis studied sculpture and photography at the University of Texas, including photojournalism studies in San Antonio and Austin. Early in her career she worked in journalism before moving to New York, where she became the full-time assistant to photographer Ralph Gibson.

Shortly after arriving in New York, she began a five-year exploration of the American rodeo, a body of work that helped establish her distinctive visual language. Writing about the series, American photography critic Tom Beck noted that the work “sets up a dialectic between the real and the abstract,” describing it as “surrealistically romantic” in its examination of perception and the shifting boundary between reality and abstraction.

In 1996, while participating in an international artists’ symposium in the Czech Republic, Mathis met her future husband, Italian sculptor Valerio Tedeschi. She subsequently relocated to Italy, where she continues to live and work between Italy and South Texas.

Over the course of more than three decades, Mathis has developed an extensive body of work ranging from long-term personal projects such as Parallel Text to commissioned photographic series such as Art&Industria. Her photographs have appeared in publications including The New York Times, Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, and Marie Claire.

Her work is represented in numerous public collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the International Center of Photography, the Brooklyn Museum, the Norton Museum of Art, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Richard M. Ross Art Museum, the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery, and the Buhl Foundation.

In addition to her photographic practice, Mathis is the curator of Foto Festival Verbania, an international photography festival in northern Italy that brings together artists, institutions, and the public through exhibitions, lectures, workshops, and cultural programming.

She continues to exhibit internationally, and her work is held in both public and private collections and is referenced in academic studies, publications, and anthologies devoted to contemporary photography.