George A. Tice collection

George A. Tice was born on October 13, 1938 in Newark, New Jersey. In 1953, Tice purchased the hobbyist developing kit and begins developing and printing his Baby Brownie snapshots. He then bought the Kodak Pony 35mm, his first adjustable camera, and joined the Carteret Camera Club in New Jersey, and spent his time photographing homeless men on the Bowery in New York. He studied commercial photography at Newark Vocational and Technical High School in 1955, but quit school at the age of 16 to work as a darkroom assistant in Newark portrait studio, Classic Photo.

Tice joined the U.S. Navy at the age of 17 and served in the Navy as a Photographer’s Mate in Memphis, Tennessee, and aboard the U.S.S. Wasp in 1956 until 1959. One of the photographs he made, “Explosion Aboard the U.S.S. Wasp”, 1959, was published on the front page of the New York Times. In 1959, Tice became the protégé and printmaker for Edward Steichen; his prints are acquired by Steichen for the Museum of Modern Art (New York).

During the 1960s, Tice worked as a home portrait photographer for American Portraits, Inc., West Orange, New Jersey. In 1969, he became a freelance photographer and the following year (1970) became an instructor in photography at the New School for Social Research. Starting in the 1970s, Tice began photographing his home state of New Jersey, which created his Urban Landscapes series which he worked on until 2000. He is well-known for his black and white landscape photography.

Doubleday published Tice’s first book, Fields of Peace: A Pennsylvania German Album, with text by Millen Brand in 1970. He has also published Paterson, New Jersey (1972), Seacoast Maine: People and Places (1973), Urban Landscapes: A New Jersey Portrait (1975), and Hometowns: An American Pilgrimage (1988), among others.

His photographs continue to be exhibited extensively around the United States and internationally, and his work can be found at the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Met, J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Center, to name a few. Tice has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Bradford Fellowship England, and the New Jersey State Council of the Arts. Tice has been teaching at the Maine Photographic Workshops since 1977. In 2015, Tice was awarded with the Lucie Award for Lifetime Achievement at Carnegie Hall.