BIOGRAPHY

Lydia Panas is a visual artist working with photography and video. A first-generation American, she was raised between Greece and the United States. Panas’ work looks at identity and what lies below the surface, investigating questions of who we are and what we want to become. All her work is made in the fields, forests, and studio of her family farm in Pennsylvania. The connection she feels to this land is the foundation of her work.

Panas’ work has been exhibited widely in the U.S. and internationally.  Her photographs are represented in public and private collections including the Brooklyn Museum, Bronx Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Palm Springs Art Museum, Allentown Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego, and the Sheldon Museum among others. Her work has appeared in many periodicals such as The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, The Village Voice, French Photo, and Hyperallergic. Panas has degrees from Boston College, School of Visual Arts, and New York University/International Center of Photography.  She is the recipient of a Whitney Museum Independent Study Fellowship and a CFEVA Fellowship.  She has three monographs, “The Mark of Abel” (Kehrer Verlag 2012), “Falling from Grace” (Conveyor Arts 2016) and, “Sleeping Beauty” (MW Editions 2021).

Panas has received numerous honors including a nomination for PDN 30 and two for Prix Pictet.  She won First Place Awards at CENTER, the London Calling Competition, the Conscientious Portfolio Competition, and TPS:16, and was Solo Exhibition Winner at The Print Center, Joyce Elaine Grant Exhibit, and GoggleWorks Center for the Arts among others.  She was selected twice for the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize Exhibition, was a repeat top-fifty winner at Critical Mass. She has garnered Honorable Mention, Second Prize, Curator’s Distinction, and Merit Awards at Silver Eye Center, Houston Center for Photography, Korean Cultural Center, Reading Public Museum among others. Grants include ten Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts, a Special Opportunity Stipend from the PCA, a John Anson Kittredge Educational Grant, and a Puffin Foundation Grant. Her photographs have appeared in many publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Photo District News, Popular Photography, San Francisco Chronicle, Rain Taxi Review of Books, Flavorpill, WSJ Blog, GEO Wissen, Die Voklskrant, Haaretz, Philadelphia Inquirer, French Photo, The Village Voice among others. Panas has been an Artist in Residence at MASS MOCA, Banff Centre for the Arts, and a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome.

She divides her time between Kutztown, Pennsylvania, and New York, New York.

COLLECTIONS
Brooklyn Museum
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Bronx Museum of the Arts
Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago
Museum of Photographic Arts at the San Diego Museum of Art
Palm Springs Art Museum
Sheldon Museum of Art
Allentown Art Museum
Southeast Museum of Photography
Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai
MoMA Library Collection
Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Franklin Furnace Artist’s Books Collection
Girls Club Collection
Candela Collection
La Fototeca, Guatemala City
Inter-Art Contemporary Art Museum, Aiud, Romania
Encontros da Imagem Collection
Yours Foundation, Poland
Lehigh University
Muhlenberg College
Comer Collection, University of Texas, Dallas
Maine Media Workshops
Center for Photography Woodstock
Numerous Private Collections