Yvette Marie Dostatni
Yvette Marie Dostatni began working as a photojournalist after high school at her hometown newspaper, The Hammond Times, in Munster, Indiana. In her mid-twenties, she developed her film on the same floor her grandfather- John Gabor, who taught her photography- worked as a lithographer on for the Chicago Tribune. In 2000, Yvette was one of twelve full-time photographers participating in the acclaimed year-long documentary project on Chicago called CITY 2000. In 2011, Yvette was one of thirty Americans invited to the Lishui Arts Festival in China. In 2015, she was nominated by Time Magazine as one of only 28 “Unsung Female Photographers of the Past Century.”
Yvette uses the camera as a passport to explore the lives of neighbors, friends, and strangers. Her subjects range from personal memories of growing up in small towns throughout the Midwest to more complex matters while living in Chicago. These visual narratives include Ladies Bingo Night at the Whiting, Indiana Moose Club, to the depiction of a man smoking a wax paper cigarette inside his car, which doubled as his life-long home on the infamous Maxwell Street in Chicago before the onslaught of mass gentrification.
She is the recipient of many international awards, including a two-time finalist for the Julia Margaret Cameron Award (2010/2019) and a two-time recipient of a Top-Fifty Photographer nomination for Critical Mass (2007/2019).
Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Lens Blog, Russian Esquire, LENSCRATCH, LensCulture, AINT-BAD, The Paris Review, Photographer’s Quarterly, National Geographic, Chicago Magazine, The Chicago Tribune Magazine andThe Chicago Reader.
Her work has been exhibited in group shows across the United States, including the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles, California, The Houston Center for Photography in Houston, Texas, the Chicago Cultural Center in Chicago, Illinois, and the Griffin Museum, Winchester, Massachusetts.
Her portfolio is part of The Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Photography Midwest Photographer’s Collection.