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. 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, the Bronx Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Palm Springs Art Museum, Michener Art Museum, Allentown Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego, the Sheldon Museum, Zendai MoMA Shanghai, among others. Her work has appeared in periodicals such as The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, The Village Voice, French Photo, Hyperallergic, Photo District News, Popular Photography, San Francisco Chronicle, Rain Taxi Review of Books, Flavorpill, WSJ Blog, GEO Wissen, Die Volkskrant, Haaretz, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Panas has received numerous awards and honors including repeat invitations to the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize Exhibit, the Top Fifty Winner for Critical Mass, and two nominations for Prix Pictet and PDN 30.  She has won First Place Awards at CENTER, London Calling, Conscientious Portfolio Competition, and TPS:16. Panas was a Solo Exhibition Winner at The Print Center, the Joyce Elaine Grant Exhibit, and the GoggleWorks Center for the Arts. She has garnered numerous Honorable Mentions, Second Prizes, Curator’s Distinctions, and Merit Awards including at the Silver Eye Center for Photography, Houston Center for Photography, Korean Cultural Center, and the Reading Public Museum. Grants include ten Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts Grants, a Special Opportunity Stipend from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a John Anson Kittredge Educational Grant, and a Puffin Foundation Grant. 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.

Panas has degrees from Boston College, the School of Visual Arts, and New York University.  She is the recipient of a Whitney Museum Independent Study Fellowship and a CFEVA Fellowship.  She has published three monographs, The Mark of Abel (Kehrer Verlag 2012), Falling from Grace (Conveyor Arts 2016), and Sleeping Beauty (MW Editions 2021). She divides her time between a farm in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, and New York City.

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
Michener Art Museum
Southeast Museum of Photography
Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai
MoMA Library Collection
Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Library
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