Jennifer Colten

Jennifer Colten works with photography focusing on landscapes where social, ecological, and cultural histories are buried, hidden, or unacknowledged. For over a decade, her work has focused within communities and places of the American Bottom—a geographical stretch along the Mississippi River in Illinois directly across from St. Louis.

Colten has been the recipient of numerous awards, with recent project support grants from the Regional Arts Commission to continue work in the Illinois American Bottom. She was co-Principal Investigator working with a team of artists and educators recently awarded a Mellon Foundation Grant for the project Mississippi River Open School for Kinship and Social Exchange (2022-2025), facilitating creative partnerships at the confluence of race, geography, and cultural knowledge. In 2024, Jennifer was a recipient of a RAC Artist Support grant and a Futures Fund grant from the Luminary Arts and the Andy Warhol Foundation.

In 2020, Colten was awarded a Regional Arts Commission (RAC) Fellowship recognizing commitment to artistic excellence, community engagement, and work that addresses the region’s social and racial inequities.

In addition to private collections, Colten’s photographs have been included in national and international institutions. These include: the Denver Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Hirsch Library, Houston, TX, the Museum für Fotographie, Braunschweig, Germany, the Museum Hundertwasser, Vienna, AU, the Museo de Arte, Colombia, SA.