Millee Tibbs is a visual artist interested in photography’s ubiquity and the tension between its truth-value and inherent manipulation of reality. Her artistic practice is rooted in several lines of inquiry: an interest in the material properties of the photographic object; the malleability of the illusionistic qualities of the photographic image; and photography’s role in the production of iconic imagery, which through its simplification of subject matter and overuse, becomes cliché. She is particularly interested in how the authentic meets the constructed, and where the real and the manipulated overlap.
She is an Associate Professor of Photography at Wayne State University in Detroit. She holds an MFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design. She’s received two MacDowell Colony fellowships, as well as multiple national and international artist residency awards. Her work has been published by the Humble Arts Foundation, NYC and the Aperture Foundation, and is held in the permanent collections of the George Eastman Museum, Detroit Institute of Arts, the Chrysler Museum, the Portland Art Museum, and the RISD Museum.