Amelia Burns was born in 1982 in Ithaca, NY. As a photographer, she explores the cultural and physical landscapes of the U.S., capturing the nuances of shared environments. She earned her BFA in Photography from Pratt Institute in 2005 and later completed her MFA at Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2023.
Today, Amelia teaches in Detroit, where she shares her experiences and passion for photography and art. Her unconventional journey profoundly shapes both her artistry and her approach to teaching, offering students a unique lens through which to view their own creative paths.
My photographs reflect a seeker’s journey, deeply influenced by a quest for spirituality and shaped by the landscapes of the United States. This search unfolds through a lens that captures solitude, the horror of capitalism, and the underworld of human experience.
My practice involves making images on the street, collecting and compiling them, and re-contextualizing them through diptychs, digital, and analog collages. I am drawn to the contradictions embedded in cultural landscapes—fake nature, topiary, artificial animals, flowers, people, and religious icons. These elements become metaphors for the tension between authenticity and artifice in contemporary Americana.
Through my travels across nearly every U.S. state, I document not only the natural world but also its entanglement with human influence. My work speaks to the loneliness, humor, beauty, pain, and joy that coexist within these spaces. The landscapes I create—whether photographic or collage-based—are imbued with a visceral connection to the physical environments I’ve passed through. They are a reprocessing of the cultural detritus that surrounds me, transforming fragments into vignettes that explore both the darkness and resilience of humanity.
At its core, my work explores the underworld of human experience, grappling with the visceral tension between authenticity and artifice in contemporary Americana. It reflects the disgusting horror of capitalism, the mysticism of my Irish Catholic upbringing, and the profound solitude that fuels my process. The resulting images are landscapes of seeking, filled with the pain, glory, and quiet resistance of life.