Lois Conner is known for her large-scale panoramic photographs relating to a global landscape. Her pictures are characterized by their narrative sweep, a sense of place, and their implicit attention to history and culture. Many of her projects have an arc of decades, including her work in China, New York, Navajo Reservation and in the American West. She also has projects centered around the landscape and architecture of Southeast Asia, Japan and West Africa. Carrying her 7”x17”, 8”x10” and “11x14” cameras by bicycle, boat, cart, or thrown over her shoulder, she navigates the land slowly, and by herself. Her photographs allow the viewer to approach the landscape with a more cumulative perspective. Although human presence is not explicit in all of her photographs, it is subtly implied in a way that allows the world to be believably rescaled. "My subject is landscape as culture. What I am trying to reveal through photography in a deliberate, yet subtle way is a sense of history. I want my photographs to describe my relationship to both the tangible and the imagined, to fact and fiction."

Conner received her BFA in Photography from Pratt Institute (1975) and an MFA in Photography from Yale University School of Art (1981).  She has been awarded numerous grants and fellowships including the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (1984), New York State Council on the Arts (1983), National Endowment for the Arts (1979), Anonymous Was a Woman (2007), Pollock-Krasner Award for Artists (2020), Rosenkranz Foundation Fellowship for Photography (2019) and the Carol and Sol Lewitt Artist-in-Residence in Praiano, Italy (2010, 2011).

In 2026, herphotographs were included in the Palladio Exhibition at the National Museum in Beijing, China. The group exhibition, Chinese Voices with her Palladio and China work (as diptychs), opens at the Qinghua Art Museum, Beijing, in July, and Parallel Horizons, M97 Gallery in August; Other Solo exhibitions include 2025: Beijing Stories, Liu Shiming Foundation, NY; 2023: Lost Horizons, Chinese University, Hong Kong; 2022: Flat Earth, Robert Klein Gallery, Boston 2021: Flat Earth, Penumbra Foundation, NY; All Under Heaven (Navajo Nation), Aurelia Gallery, Santa Fe; 2019: From the Landscape, Fordham University Art Gallery at Lincoln Center, NY; Hangzhou and the Lotus, Han Feng Art Space, NY; Lotus, Trees and the Jingnan Landscape, Twin Osmanthus Studio, Hangzhou; Andromeda, The Wall at Glam, M on the Bund, Shanghai; 2018:The Long View, Shanghai Center of Photography; 1984 (Early Portraits in the Landscape), M97 Gallery, Shanghai;  Lotus Leaves, Wairapa Academy, Featherston, New Zealand; Permanent installation of her Huangshan (1984) at the entryway to the Asian Galleries, British Museum, London; 2017:Diandao: Downside Up, Zhizhusi, Gallery at Temple, Beijing; 2016: Arcadian Realms, Naumkeag, Stockbridge, Massachusetts;  2015:The Chinese Landscape, KMR Arts, Connecticut; 2014: Beijing: Contemporary and Imperial, Cleveland Art Museum, Ohio; The Long View, Gitterman Gallery, NY; Beijing: Unfurling the Landscape, Australian National University, CIW Gallery, Canberra, Australia; Collecting  Landscapes, M97 Gallery, Shanghai; Beijing, Zetterquist Gallery, NY; 2013: Searching for Van Gogh, 东西大理》项目宣传片 Dali, China; 2012: Landed (curated by Geng Jiangyi), JNBY Gallery, Hangzhou, China; “Lotus” (permanent exhibition), Chelsea and Westminster Health Charity, London, England; Montana Prairie, Missoula Art Museum, Montana; 2011: Beijing Building, Rossi and Rossi, London; 2010: Life in a Box, Hanart, Hong Kong; 2008: Spring Training, Beijing, Pékin Fine Arts, Beijing; Angkor Wat, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada; 2007: Twirling the Lotus; Rossi and Rossi Gallery, London; 2006: Lotus, Zetterquist Gallery, NY; Thogan, Tibetan Plateau, Latse Tibetan Cultural Library, NY, 2004: Lois Conner, China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, China; 2003: To Be, Laurence Miller Gallery, New York; 2002: Across China, Embassy House, Dongzhimenwai, Beijing;  About Landscape, Hollywood Center for Art and Design, Hollywood, Florida; 2001: Yuanming Yuan, Sherman Gallery, Sydney, Australia; Depicting China, Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong; 2000: Lotus, Laurence Miller Gallery, New York. This is a limited list. Lois began exhibiting her work in New York at the United Nations, in 1973 in the Secretariat Lobby, and in 1976 in the General Assembly Lobby. She worked for the United Nations from 1971-1985. Her first New York Gallery show was at the at the Marcuse Pfeifer Gallery in 1982.

In the fall of 2012, her work was featured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the Chinese Gardens: Pavilions, Studios, Retreats exhibition (with two large triptychs of lotus, and several verticals). She was included in Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography, Museum of Modern Art, NY, 2010. The Asian Art Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, presented a retrospective of her work, Landscape as Culture, in 1993. Her work is in the permanent collections of many museums,  including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Getty Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in CA; She is also represented at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum and the British Library in London.

Her books include the upcoming 2027: Unfolding the Landscape, L’Artiere, Bologna; 2024: To Be, L’Artiere, Bologna; 2023: Geng Jiangyi, a handmade book exhibited at UCCA in Beijing; 2022: Elliptical (ovals and circles from 2020), Penumbra Foundation, NY; 2019: Lotus, Trees and the Jiangnan Landscape, Lin Haizhong’s Osmanthus Studio, Hangzhou; 2018: A Long View, Shanghai Center of Photography; Lotus Leaves, Wairarapa Academy, New Zealand; Lost: Beijing, Kris Graves Projects, New York; 2014: Beijing: Contemporary and Imperial, Princeton Architectural Press; 2011: Beijing Building, Rossi and Rossi, London; 2010: Life in a Box, Hanart, Hong Kong, 2007: Twirling the Lotus, Rossi and Rossi, London, 2000: China: The Photographs of Lois Conner, Callaway, NY; 1996: Out West: 30 Panoramic Views of the American West , Stewart, Tabori and Chang. NY; 1993: Panoramas of the Far East, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington D.C; 1992: In the Shadow of the Wall: Photographs of China by Lois Conner, Taiwan Museum of Art, Taichung, and 1988: The River Flows into the Heavens, Photographs of China by Lois Conner; Limited Edition Photogravure book printed by Thomas Palmer, Providence, Rhode Island.

Other books and catalogues include 2022:Object Lesson, The Legacy of Richard Benson, Aperture, NY; Art of Creating, Christopher Benson, Fisher Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Home Ground Collection, Portland Art Museum Press, Oregon; History of An Art School, Marta Kuzma, Yale School of Art; Verlag der Buchhandlung, Walther und Franz Konig, Koln; 2020: Questions to Working Photographer”, Aperture, Sasha Wolf and Samantha Marlow, NY; Keeper of the Hearth: Picturing Roland Barthes’ Unseen Photograph, Edited by Odette England with forward by Charlotte Cotton, Schilt Publishing, Amsterdam; 2019: Civilization, The Way We Live Now”, William Ewing, Holly Roussel, Thames and Hudson (traveling through 2026); 2018: Alternate Processes in Photography: Technique, History and Creative Potential, Brian Arnold, Oxford University Press; 2016: Platinum Renaissance, National Gallery of Art, D.C.; The Literati Within, Sotheby’s Catalogue, NY (edited by Mee-Seen Loong); Face It”, Portrait exhibition, Tennessee State University and Bowling Green State University; 2015: Cave Temples at Mogao and Dunhuang, Getty Museum, Los Angeles; 2014: The Photographer’s Playbook, Aperture; 2013: Changing Views: Photography and Environmental Action, University of Virginia; Situation, Deborah Berke Architects, NY; Campagna, Aperture Magazine, Cover story, NY, April; EAST东WEST西SEE大DALI理》项目宣传片, Dali, Yunnan, China, August; 2012: Spring: Cai Guo-Qiang”, Zhejiang Art Museum, Hangzhou, China; 2011: Where are you? Rizzoli, New York;  Mountain; Conde Nast Traveler, New York; 2010: Picturing New York, Museum of Modern Art, New York; Life in the City, Museum of Modern Art, Penguin/Viking; Shanghai: A History in Photographs, edited by Liu Heung Shing and Karen Smith, Viking/Penguin; 2009: Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West, Museum of Modern Art, New York; Picturing New York, Museum of Modern Art, NY; 2008 The Wide Open: Prose, Poetry, and Photographs of the Prairie”, National Prairie Foundation, Montana; First Doubt: Optical Confusion in Modern Photography, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn; 2007: Art for Yale: Collecting for a New Century”, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Ct; 2006: New York, New York: Fifty Years of Art, Architecture, Cinema, Performance, Photography and Video”; Grimaldi Forum, Monaco; 2005:The Physical Print, Richard Benson, Jonathan Edwards College, Yale University, New Haven, Ct.

Conner has been teaching photography for over forty years, including a decade at the Yale University School of Art. Other venues include Princeton University, Sarah Lawrence College, Cooper Union School for the Arts, Bard College, Stanford University, the New School, the School of Visual Arts, Pratt Institute, Fordham University and Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. She also taught at The China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, China in 2003 and in 2019.  Lois is currently a visiting teacher at the Penumbra Foundation.