Marilyn Conway

born 1941 East Orange, New Jersey; lives Albuquerque, New Mexico

BiographyBorn in 1941, Marilyn Conway is a fine art photographer who moved to New Mexico in the 1960s to pursue a Fine Arts Degree in Photography from the University of New Mexico. For the next 25 years, she worked as a film photographer, documenting her world in Martineztown and the South Valley of Albuquerque as well as other parts on New Mexico. During these years, slowly and unbeknownst to her, Marilyn was developing a chemical sensitivity to her darkroom chemicals. Then, after the city of Albuquerque sprayed her South Valley neighborhood with insecticide, she developed the environmental illness and extreme chemical sensitivity that ended this phase of her career. For awhile, she hired other people to print her photographs for her. She also experimented with pinhole photography using Polaroid film to avoid exposure to darkroom chemicals. She switched from film to digital photography and created a digital process that gives new photos a look and feel similar to her early work. Her work is in museums, businesses, and galleries throughout New Mexico and the country, including the Museum of Fine Art in Santa Fe and The Museum of Albuquerque.

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