Biography

Dennis Reed is best known for having recovered the lost work of an entire community of photographic artists. The result was the exhibition and catalogue, Japanese Photography in America, 1920-1940, which the Getty Museum described as “groundbreaking.” The exhibition traveled to such museums as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Oakland Museum, Oakland, California, and the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.

In 2016, he curated Making Waves: Japanese American Photography, 1920-1940 for the Japanese American National Museum, and he wrote the exhibition catalog. The show was named one of the best ten exhibitions of the year by the Los Angeles Times.  

He is also co-author of Pictorialism in California: Photographs, 1900-1940, published jointly by the J. Paul Getty Museum & The Huntington Library. Among his essays are Hy Hirsh: Experiments in Filmmaking and Photography, published by Paul Hertzmann, Inc. in 2007, The Wind Came from the East: Asian American Photography, published in 2008 by Stanford University in Asian American Art, as well as Sweet and Sour: Photographs of Charles Wong and Dualities: The Photographs of Irene Poon, both published by Velvet Lens Cap in 2009 & 2011. He has also written for the Oxford University Encyclopedia (online), UCLA and UC Riverside, among others.

He has lectured at the de Young Museum, The Huntington Library, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Oakland Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, Japanese American National Museum, the Laguna Beach Museum of Art, Boston University, and The Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, among others. He has appeared on NPR three times, including the program, The Story, in 2010. He also appeared in the art biography, Toyo Miyatake: Infinite Shades of Gray, an award-winning documentary produced by the Japanese American National Museum. An interview with Reed was published in Art on Paper magazine (January-February 2008 issue). Most recently, he appeared on Tyler Green's, Modern Art Notes podcast #464 (September 2020).

For nearly forty years, he has collected art and photographs. Selections from his collection have been shown in such exhibitions as Made in California, Watkins to Weston: 101 Years of California Photography, The History of Women Photographers, and After the Photo-Secession, among others. Institutions showing his collection include: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Huntington, Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Oakland Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Corcoran Gallery (Washington, D.C.), the Crocker Museum of Art, the Laguna Beach Museum of Art, the Akron Art Museum, Boston University, Cornell University, The Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington,  and the Autry Museum of the American West, among others. Lost & Found: Photographs from the Dennis Reed Collection, was mounted by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in 2006.  In 2015, Black & White magazine reproduced a number of works from Reed’s collection and interviewed him in an article entitled, Why Collect Photography? A Conversation with Dennis Reed. 

In the summer of 2019, the J. Paul Getty Museum acquired the Dennis Reed Collection of Japanese American Photography. Many of the works now at the Getty museum are those exhibited in Japanese Photography in America and in Making Waves exhibitions. Selected examples were included in Unseen: 35 Years of Collecting Photographs at the main Getty Museum site. 

Reed remains a practicing artist, photographer and designer, and was named a Southern California notable designer by the Typecraft Design Library. He has won national design awards, including twice winning the American Institute of Graphic Arts’ 50 Best Books, as well as the Art Museum Association's Award of Excellence, among others.

In 2016, Los Angeles Harbor College Art Gallery presented Allegory for the Present: Merwin Belin & Dennis Reed, which include photographs taken by Reed since 2000. In 2017-2018, Reed's photographs were included in the exhibition, Tow Truck Towing a Tow Truck, at the As-Is LA Gallery in the Pico Union district of Los Angeles. Most recently, in 2018, he was given a one-person show at As-Is Gallery. The exhibition consisted of two shows, early work done between 1968 and 1970, and his newest work, Police Culture. See dennisreedphoto.com for more information.

Reed was the former Dean of Arts, and is currently Professor Emeritus of Art, at Los Angeles Valley College. He was also the director of the college Art Gallery, where he organized many exhibitions. He was formerly the Chair of the Photographic Arts Council at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and he was a founding board member of the Photographic Arts Council / Los Angeles.