Jennifer Montgomery was born on May 28, 1961, in New York City.[1] She was one of the subjects of photographer Jock Sturges during her youth, later developing a relationship with him.[2] She obtained her BA from Wesleyan University in 1984,[1] later moving to San Francisco that same year.[2]
Montgomery briefly experimenting with painting, writing, as well as activism with the all-LGBT Victoria Mercado Brigade where she recalled "sending a brigade down with $10,000 for armaments".[2] After one year at the San Francisco Art Institute (1986-1987) and at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1988-1989), she obtained an MFA from Bard College in 1993.[1]
Moving to New York, Montgomery began making experimental films with Super 8 film as her medium,[2] one of the few remaining filmmakers doing so.[3] Her Super-8 short films include Home Avenue (1989), Age 12: Love with a Little L (1990), and I, A Lamb (1992).[4] In 1995, she premiered Art for Teachers of Children, a black-and-white film starring Duncan Hannah and Caitlin Grace McDonnell that "serves up a number of penetrating in-sights into some of the most troubling issues of American sexual politics".[2] She premiered Home Avenue (1989) and Love With a Little L (1990) at the New York Queer Experimental Film Festival.[1] In 1998, she premiered Troika at NewFest.[4] She later produced a feature-length video film, Threads of Belonging.[5] In 2005, she released Notes on the Death of Kodachrome, touching on the obsolescence of her preferred medium,[6] She was part at the 2008 Whitney Biennial.[7]
Montgomery worked at Cooper Union as an Adjunct Professor of Film and Video from 1991 to 1995, before becoming an adjunct professor of women's studies at Barnard College in 1996.[1] She was a film instructor at Ithaca College and the School of Visual Arts in 1995.[1]
Montgomery won a Service Prize at the 1989 San Francisco International Film Festival for Home Avenue.[1] She was awarded a MacDowell Colony Fellowship in 1991.[8] In 1996, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in filmmaking.[9][1] She won the Anonymous Was A Woman Award in 2015.[10]
Montgomery was based in Brooklyn as of 1996,[1] but later moved to Chicago by 2008.[7]
