In Remembrance: John E. “Jed” Devine ’67, ’72MFA Died on October 29 2024

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Jed Devine—photographer, teacher, husband, father, and grandfather—passed away on October 29, 2024. He died at home on Martha’s Vineyard, surrounded by his wife Barbara Kassel, his son Jesse Devine, and his daughter Siobhan Devine. 

Born on August 31, 1944, Jed grew up in Pleasantville, New York, the middle of three brothers. He attended Pleasantville High School, Deerfield Academy, and Yale University, where he captained the baseball team and received his BA in fine arts (1967) and MFA in graphic design.

After graduate school, Jed focused on photography, notably the black-and-white palladium prints for which he is known. He exhibited with Daniel Wolf and then Benrubi Gallery in New York City. In 1986, Jed received a Guggenheim fellowship for his photographs of Central Park’s Bethesda Terrace. 

Jed’s photography is represented in many major museum, corporate, university, and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Victoria and Albert Museum; London; the International Center of Photography, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Eastman House, Rochester.

Jed had a long teaching career, primarily at SUNY Purchase, where he was head of the visual arts department for a time. He delighted in working with students, many of whom became lifelong friends. 

Jed and his first wife, dancer Emily Devine, raised Jesse and Siobhan in an artist’s loft in Manhattan and on Friendship Long Island, Maine. In the book that Jed published with his friend Jim Dinsmore about the island, titled Friendship, he called his children “his most insightful and candid critics and his greatest blessings.” 

Jed met Barbara, a painter, in September 2001. Their second date included having drinks at Windows on the World.  Thirty-six hours later the restaurant was gone, and they had been together ever since. As a couple, they influenced and contributed to each other’s work throughout 23 years together in Manhattan, Maine, and Martha’s Vineyard. In 2015, they had a joint exhibition at the Clark Gallery, titled Musings. 

In 2010, health issues led Jed to explore digital color photographs that he described as “wildly gregarious”—illustrating his determination to turn setbacks into blessings. Even in the face of serious heart disease, he lived life fully and said he felt very lucky. 

Jed’s grandchildren knew him as the most playful Grandpa around. As he wrote toward the end: “I’m just a kid, hoping to play a few more innings before it gets dark.”

In addition to Barbara, Jesse, and Siobhan, Jed is survived by his brothers Michael Devine and Peter Devine, his half-sister Daria Lee, Emily Devine, his daughter-in-law Emily Harney, his son-in-law Gabriel Marquez, and his beloved grandchildren Ray, Myles, Miriam, and Amaya. 

Benrubi Gallery in NYC will host a memorial exhibition opening June 12, 2025. A memorial website has been established at mykeeper.com.

—Submitted by the family.