Wendy Ploger is a photographer from California. She spends most of her time between Tucson, Arizona, and New York City.
After 15 years as a graphic artist, she switched to event photography. Later she began to weave her personal writing and her photographs into one story.
Her first book is Thank You for Ruining My Birthday. She published it herself. It has 104 pages and 10 inserts. The book is about dating in New York City after the sudden end of a long-term relationship.
The book is built from her personal diaries and from photographs in her own library. She wrote the diary entries between 2015 and 2019. During the pandemic she was injured and could not walk. In that time she reread 116 pages of diary text and later cut them down to 10 pages. The idea for a book began in an online photography group led by Jason Langer. Cara Buzzell designed the book.
Her website also shows the project Humiliation of Desire, intimate observations about aging, relationships, loss, desire and identity. Another project, Fire & Form, shows early glass experiments made at Sonoran Glass School.
