Listen to "American Pie"

(More about Don McLean's song "American Pie" here)

Jennifer Dickson  

South African, Canadian (Piet Retief, Transvaal, 1936)

“Bye-Bye Miss America”

etching, aquatint, hand colored

Jennifer Dickson is a photographer and printmaker. She studied in London at Goldsmiths’ College followed by graduate work with William Stanley Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris.  She taught at Brighton College of Art, where she founded the program in printmaking with an emphasis on photographic methods. Elected to the Royal Society of Painters, Etchers and Engravers in 1965, she became a member of the Royal Academy in 1975 after emigrating to Canada. Honors continued to accumulate in her adopted country, where she was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 1995. In 2002, the National Archives of Canada established the Jennifer Dickson Fons, a project that will eventually collect all of the artist’s original photographic material.

Dickson’s work of the 1960s and 1970s concerns gender roles in Western society including “Bye-Bye Miss America,” which takes its title and includes quotes from Don McLean’s phenomenally popular 1971 ballad. Her more recent work addresses the symbolism of historic gardens and more generally the devaluing of beauty.