Diana Nicholette Jeon

Diana Nicholette Jeon’s internationally exhibited work explores universal themes of loss, dreams, memory, and female identity via metaphor and personal narrative. She brings a sense of her personal history and experimental processes to her lens-based art. Jeon uses beauty as a conceit to engage viewers with challenging subject matter. Jeon believes media has mana* and often uses it to underscore the conceptual underpinning of a series. While almost all her work begin’s with a lens, she employed digital and traditional media and processes to transform the work to her own, often mixed media works. Jeon also works with printmaking, video and sound production, either separately or in conjunction with her photographic work.

Before returning to school to pursue her long-time first love of art, Jeon spent 10 years working in high tech. Perhaps due to her experiences working in California's Silicon Valley, she fell in love with Photoshop when she first encountered it in 1994. In school, she gravitated immediately to digital tools, while still pursuing training in traditional media. She attended the University of Hawaii where she received a BA in Studio Art, then relocated with her husband and toddler way to Maryland to earn an MFA in Imaging and Digital Art from the University of Maryland at Baltimore County in 2006. Afterward, she and her family returned to Hawaii, where she spent seven years teaching digital imaging and motion graphics at the college level. In 2013, she decided to plunge into producing her art on a full-time basis.

Jeon's work has been exhibited in over 200 solo and group exhibitions and film screenings internationally. She has mounted solo exhibitions at Honolulu Museum of Art (HI), Griffin Museum of Photography (MA); Blue Sky Gallery (OR); Garage Gallery (NY), HeadOn Photo Festival, Disorder Gallery (Sydney AU), Honolulu Printmakers (HI), A Smith Gallery (TX), and Kirsch Gallery (HI). Group exhibition venues include: BBA Gallery (DE), Calgary Contemporary (AB), California Museum of Photography (CA), Capitol Modern Museum (formerly called the Hawaii State Art Museum), COPA Gallery (TH), Foley Gallery (NY), Gallery MCC (FR), Griffin Museum of Photography (MA), Honolulu Museum of Art (HI), Maine Museum of Photographic Arts (ME), Millepiani (IT), Mira Forum (PT), Museu de Lamego (PT), Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto (IT), PH21 Gallery at Barcelona (ES), PH21 Gallery (HU), Rhode Island Center for the Photographic Arts (RI), the Romanian Embassy at Paris (FR) the San Diego Art Institute (CA), Soho Photo (NY), Southeast Center for Photography (SC), Tethys Gallery (IT). Festival participation includes solo, group and award exhibitions at the Capture (BC), Exposure (AB), Gala Awards 5th Biennial of Fine Art & Documentary Photography (ES), Head On (AU), Medium (CA), Month of Photography Denver (CO), and PhotoNOLA (LA) Photo Festivals.

Jeon’s work has been recognized with multiple honors and awards, including four Recognition Purchase Awards from the Hawaii State Foundation of Art and Culture. Additional recognition includes the Julia Margaret Cameron Award, LensCulture B+W Awards, Photolucida Critical Mass Top 200, the Analog Sparks Awards, the Prix de la Photographie Paris Awards, Mira Mobile Prize, HeadOn Awards, the Moscow Photo Awards, and the Mobile Photo Awards, among others.

The Huffington Post, Lens Culture, FRAMES Magazine In the In-Between, The Hand, Don't Take Pictures, Binfeng Space Art/Culture magazine, PhotoPhore, Corriere della Sera, FRAMES Magazine, Gente di Fotografia, B+W Magazine, SHOTS, Pf, Don't Take Pictures, and Lenscratch are among the media outlets that featured her work.

Jeon’s work is in both public and private collections, including for works in the permanent collection of the State of Hawaii Art in Public Places program, the International Printing Museum, the Albert O. Kuhn Library Special Collections Department at University of Maryland Baltimore County, and Haverford College.

Jeon writes about photography for OneTwelve Publications and FRAMES magazine. She resides in Honolulu, HI with her husband and son.