Penni is a photographer, photo stylist, photography teacher, and finds the time to run a business as an interior designer and as an organizer for businesses in San Francisco. She received Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree from the University of Arizona and worked on my Master’s degree in Photography at the city's Art Institute. She created etchings and monotypes at the Kala Institute in Berkeley, and her work traveled to several museums and art centers in Colorado and Arizona. She was the artist in residence at Magnolia Editions (Oakland) where she worked on lithographs from her own photographs.
Her Beauty of Aging series were taken on her travels. The collection is a look at old building, walls, cottages, windows, gates, and other structures from the past that still carry a sense of elegance from the effects of time and weather. She hand paints her photographs like the artists of the early 19th century. Describing her work, she says "Painting creates another dimension for the photograph, and the final result is a unique fusion of fact and fantasy, the world as it is and as it is imagined. I have worked on this series for a number of years, and it is a reflection of my own feelings about aging, a transition that can be beautiful."
Penni also worked as a mentor for “Bridges to Understanding” on the Navajo Reservation (Northern Arizona), in Ollantaytambo (Peru), and in Dharmasala (India) teaching children digital photography, a project for the Smithsonian and other American museums. In fall 2006, she joined me on my Bhutan: Land of the Thunder Dragon photo expedition, photographing the culture and people.
Her hand painted image of a novice monk darting into his monastery was photographed at Wangdichholing Palace (converted to a monastery) near the town of Jakar. It was built in 1857 as the principal residence of Bhutan's first king and was used by the second and third, but it is now used a Buddhist school.
Here are Penni Webb's: The Beauty of Aging and Penni Webb Design websites.
