Background
John Brumfield was born in 1934 in Los Angeles, California, United States.
John Brumfield was born in 1934 in Los Angeles, California, United States.
Brumfield received his MFA in Photography at the California Institute of the Arts in 1972. He also earned an MA in Art from the University of California at Berkeley (1970), and both a BA and an MA in English Literature from California State University at Los Angeles in 1961 and 1962.
Brumfield was both chairman of the Photography Program in the School of Art and Design at California Institute of the Arts and a visiting lecturer in the History of Contemporary Photography at The Art Center School of Design in Pasadena, California. Since 1962 he has held a variety of teaching positions at such schools as the University of Southern California, California State University at San Jose, California State College in Bakersfield; and from 1977 to 1979 he was associate dean of the School of Art and Design at California Institute of the Arts. Between the years 1963 and 1967 Brumfield worked as a commercial freelance photographer.
In describing his work, the artist stated that he did "modular organizations of sequentially patterned 16 x 20 black-and-white photographs which, toying with the fictional nature of identity, show no concern whatsoever with 'photographic' esthetics."
The teacher-photographer is a member of CAA, the United Professors of California and SPE.
