Bio
Anna Harper was born as Patricia Anna Jacob to John Avis Jacob and Mary LeOra Eckman on November 23, 1969. Her father was a steelworker and mother a data entry clerk for a division of the FBI. She first fell in love with photography at age nine when her dad brought home a Polaroid camera, she was instantly hooked.
Anna grew up in the wooded marshland areas of western Pennsylvania. The area has beautiful large trees that were peaceful and quieting to the mind, and at times they seemed dark and foreboding. In the spring the forest was beautiful, bursting full of blooms from yellow, pink and white dogwood trees. The marsh areas housed a multitude of spring peepers and birds, morning, noon and night there was music. As a child, she spent a great deal of her time in the walking in nature.
The year that Anna was born was also the year that US astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon while commanding the Apollo 11 mission. This had a large impact on her view of the world. It was like miracle grow to her imagination. She could not read enough fiction, especially science fiction, and viewed much of it as a prelude to the world to come. She subscribed to the New Yorker at age 14 for the short stories.
As a young child she was afraid of a dream or subconscious thought she had. She dreamt her family were vampires. She would sleep with the covers pulled up around her neck, laying awake, trying not to sleep for fear of what she imagined might happen while she slept. As she grew a bit older, she understood that her imagination and subconscious were not things she should be afraid of. She grew interested in how people think and began reading medical studies and journals. She found that our imagination kicks in where our understanding leaves off, filling in the blanks to help us make sense of our surroundings. It is this ambiguity that makes makes her photographs interesting, mysterious, romantic, memorable and at times even haunting.
In the early nineties she studied under a number of professional fine art photographers Don E. Camp, Michael Changnon and Judy Dater. These influences convinced her to move to New York in the spring of 1992.