Carole Cavanaugh is a lens-based artist living in Vermont where she had a long career as a professor of Japanese culture and cinema at Middlebury College. A guiding principle of her work is expressed in the Japanese word miren — a feeling of lingering attachment for a lost time or experience. Her images suggest something missing, faded, or unfinished inspired by miren as the essence of the photographic medium. She is drawn to the subtleties of the simple and the spare in her single images as well as her more complexly designed composites. Her collages are surrealist dreamscapes heavily shaped by her political anxieties in our current times.

With a PhD from Yale, she has published several books and articles on Japanese cinema. She lived and taught periodically in the vibrant city of Kyoto where she absorbed the aesthetics of Japanese visual arts, but a more immediate influence is the natural environment surrounding her rural home. She began combining these sources of inspiration in her turn to photography in 2023.

juried exhibitions and awards

The 38th Annual Members Only Show, Texas Photographic Society, Center for Contemporary Arts, Abilene, TX, October 16 - December 6, 2025, Juror, Wendi Schneider (Three Teapots)

MonoVisions Black and White Photography Awards 2025 Honorable Mention for Conceptual Series (Documented) and two Nature and Wildlife Series (Calligraphy and Birches)

The Shape of Things, Praxis Gallery, 2136 Ford Parkway PMB 215, St. Paul, MN, May 17 - June 14, 2025. Juror, Alan Shefland (Withered Petals)

Fine Art Photography Awards 11th Edition 2024-2025, two series and one single image nominated: in amateur division: Up/Rooted Series (Conceptual category), Wings (People category), and Birches Series (Nature category)

Living and Photographing in an Imperfect Union, The Photographer’s Eye Collective and Gallery, Escondido, CA, March 3 - May 31, 2025, Juror, Arthur Ollman (Two works selected: Reliquary and Diploma)

She, A Smith Gallery, Johnson City , TX, December 20, 2024 - January 30, 2025, Juror, Polly Gaillard (Reflection), selected for “the 27”

Portrait: Self and Others, PhotoPlace Gallery, Middlebury, VT, May 3 - May 24, 2024. Juror, Aline Smithson (Cousins)

In the Periphery, Light Factory Photo Arts Center, Charlotte, NC, April 20 - May 13, 2024. Juror, Brittani Taylor (Reliquary)

Daydreams and Night Lights, Radiant Aberration and zoneFIVE Gallery, Colorado Springs, CO, October 6 - November 30, 2023. Juror, Sandra Klein (Forbid My Tears)

Water Is Sacred, ACCI Gallery, Berkeley, CA, September 1 - October 8, 2023. Juror, Susanna Lamaina (Hold Off the Earth Awhile and Weeping Brook)

TPS 31: The International Competition, Texas Photographic Society,  Nancy Fyfe Cardozier Gallery, The University of Texas Permian Basin, Odessa, Texas, August 28 - October 6, 2023. Juror: Charlotte Cotton (Swimmer’s Dream)

Permaculture: Art of the Natural World, Indianapolis Art Center, Indianapolis, ID, August 19 - October 29, 2023. Juror: Jo Banister (Two works selected: Next Big Step and New Frontier)

Solar, Pour-d Gallery, Rockford, MI. June 17 - September 1, 2023. Juror, Tree Anderson (Two works selected: Peaches on Green and Morning Sunlight)

Innovations 2023 the 32nd Annual International Open Juried Exhibition, International Society of Experimental Artists, Cultural Center of Cape Cod, South Yarmouth, MA, September 12 - October 7, 2023. Jurors, Nancy Barch, Lia Rothstein (Nefertiti at the Apocalypse)

Completely Color, Inter-Society Color Council, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, June 11 - 15, 2023. Jurors, Mark Fairchild, Danielle Siembieda-Gribben (Deconstructed Poppy)

Flower Power, CORE Art Space Gallery, Lakewood, CO, May 12 - 29, 2023. Juror, Michael Paglia (Iris)

Spark! Fueling a Love of Birds, Birds of Vermont Museum, Huntington, VT, May 1 - October 31, 2023. Juror, Kir Talmadge  (New Spirit)

books and selected articles

Word and Image in Japanese Cinema, edited with Dennis Washburn, (Cambridge University Press, 2001)

Sanshō Dayū (Sansho the Bailiff) with Dudley Andrew, (British Film Institute, 2000 and 2020)

Myth and Masculinity in the Japanese Cinema: Towards a Political Reading of the ‘Tragic Hero’ by Isolde Standish, in Times Literary Supplement, February 11, 2001.

Ozu’s Tokyo Story by David Desser, in Monumenta Nipponica,  Vol. 53, No. 2 (Summer 1998), pp. 296-298.

Perspectives on Kurosawa, edited by James Goodwin, in Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 15 No. 3 (August 1995),  442-3.

Reframing Japanese Cinema: Authorship, Genre, History edited by Arthur Nolletti and David Desser, Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 50 No. 3 (Autumn, 1995) pp. 428-431.