Jo Ann Walters was born in December 10, 1952, in Alton, Illinois,[1] and raised in the aforementioned town, where her father was a local businessman who dealt in sheet metal fabrication.
[1] She later worked at the Rhode Island School of Design, before moving to State University of New York at Purchase, where she was eventually promoted to associate professor[3] and served as Chair of Photography.
[1] In 1985, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography;[6] she would therefore take this opportunity that year to start a project on photographing working-class rural people throughout the United States, particularly women and children.
[2][7] That year, in the Chicago Tribune's review of the Museum of Contemporary Photography group exhibition New Color/New Work, Abigail Foerstner called "Thresholds", her photographic essay on backyards in the Midwest, "lyrical scenes where colors are muted yet luminous".
[14] According to Jude Schwendenwien of the Hartford Courant, Walters' photography "runs the gamut from benign landscapes in Ohio, Illinois and Maine to tender moments between mothers and children that would look great in Life magazine".