Terry Evans  (American, 1944) 

Terry Evans (American, b.1944) was born in Kansas City, MO. She is an artist and photographer who focuses on North America's prairies and urban developments. She graduated from the University of Kansas with a BFA in Painting and Commercial Art. Although Evans received no formal photography training, her father taught her the basics of photography and helped her develop her skills. Her other artistic influences include photojournalist Charles Harbutt (American, b.1935) and photographer James Enyeart (American, b.1943).

Early in her career, Evans was able to photograph Robert F. Kennedy while he was campaigning for president at her college campus. However, Evans's early work usually concentrated on more mundane subjects, as she chose to photograph people in poverty, farmers, her own family, and the residents of her hometown in Kansas. Later, her work shifted to an examination of the American landscape, from close-ups of plant and root systems to aerial views showing how humans have marked the natural landscape. Several of her photographs are shot from high above houses and swimming pools, showing the organization of urban development. Evans's photographs have been shown in solo exhibitions in the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Some of her permanent collections are shown in the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Evans has won several grants, including the 2006 Anonymous Was a Woman Fellowship and the 1996 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. Some of her major publications include Revealing Chicago: An Aerial Portrait, Disarming the Prairie, and Prairie: Images of Ground and Sky. More recently, Evans has been documenting the North Dakota oil boom and working steel mills. She has also photographed the Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland, as well as the Flint Hills of Matfield Green, KS, and is working on a large-scale landscape photography project taking shots of the prairie between Canada and Texas. Evans lived in Salina, KS, for 26 years, but now lives and works in Chicago. She taught at Bethany College in Lindborg, KS, for three years, and now lectures at Columbia College in Chicago.