Jane Fulton Alt (born May 26, 1951) is an American photographer whose work explores themes of love, loss, and spirituality. She is also a clinical social worker.
Early Life and Education
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Alt studied at the Evanston Art Center, Columbia College Chicago, and the Art Institute of Chicago. She earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan and an M.A. from the University of Chicago. She lives and works in Evanston, Illinois, and New Orleans, Louisiana.
Career
Alt began exploring the visual arts while pursuing her career as a clinical social worker, a profession she has practiced since the 1970s. Her photographic work gained significant attention following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when she accompanied residents of New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward to examine damage to their homes as part of the "Look and Leave" program organized by the City of New Orleans and the American Red Cross. This work resulted in the exhibition "Look and Leave: New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina" at the DePaul University Art Museum, which was recognized as one of the Top 5 Photography Museum Shows in Chicago in 2006. She later published the book Look and Leave: Photographs and Stories from New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward (University of Georgia Press, 2009).
Alt's other notable bodies of work include the "Burn" portfolio, which documents controlled prairie burns, and "Still Life: A Photographer's Journey Through Grief and Gardening" (MW Editions, 2026), a series made in a native garden following the sudden loss of her husband.
Awards and Recognition
- 2007 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship Award
- 2007, 2008, and 2009 Ragdale Fellowship Award
- Three-time winner of Photolucida's Critical Mass (for her Katrina and Burn portfolios)
Permanent Collections
Alt's work is held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Photographic History Collection at the National Museum of American History, the Southeast Museum of Photography (Daytona, Florida), the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the New Orleans Museum of Art, Yale University Beinecke Library, DePaul University Art Museum, Centro Fotografico Alvarez Bravo (Oaxaca, Mexico), and the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), among others.
Publications
- Look and Leave: Photographs and Stories from New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward (University of Georgia Press, 2009)
- Still Life: A Photographer's Journey Through Grief and Gardening (MW Editions, 2026)
- Her work has also appeared in Katrina Exposed: A Photographic Reckoning (New Orleans Museum of Art, 2006) and New Orleans: The Making of an Urban Landscape (3rd ed.).
