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Kate Joyce's photographs explore composition, texture and geometry found in the mundane. Her most recent series, Aporia, resulted in metaphorical black-and-white photographs of diner grills in which Joyce transmuted pancakes, sausages and cutlery into objects ominous and humorous, familiar and unrecognizable. Such shifts in perspective underline Joyce's interest in the ambiguous, yet energizing, potential of her medium.
Joyce was introduced to photography at age 13 when she learned to make Van Dyke prints from a pin¬hole camera. She studied sociology and photojournalism at San Francisco State University, Spanish in Guatemala, and documentary photography at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University in Durham, N.C.
In 2003 Kate was awarded a Lewis Hine Documentary Initiative Fellowship from the Center for Documentary Studies. Over 10 months she photographed residents of a government-subsidized settlement in Bloemfontein, South Africa. The resulting body of work is as much about home and housing policy as it is about territorial barriers and compassionate interaction with our surrounding communities, whether they are next door, across the tracks, or thousands of miles away.
Joyce has worked with various artists, photographers, historians and writers throughout her career. Notably, she collaborated with author Rebecca Solnit and photographer Susan Schwartzenberg on their publication "Hollow City: The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism".
In 2004 Joyce worked with her father, blacksmith and fine artist Tom Joyce, documenting the fabrication of his sculpture at an industrial forge in Illinois. While there, Kate was drawn to the visually subtle details in the factory and created "The Quench Tank", a body of color photography.