ANN B ROSEN

ARTIST BIO

Ann B Rosen is known for her social justice projects using portrait photography as a tool for empowerment and empathy. In Rosen’s current project, Being Seen, she teaches art and photography workshops with women from marginalized communities such as formerly homeless Veterans, recovering addicts, and those who’ve been incarcerated.

Rosen graduated from SUNY at Buffalo (BFA) and the Visual Studies Workshop (MFA), studying with Nathan Lyons, Joan Lyons and John Wood.

She has received grants from the Brooklyn Arts Council and Puffin Foundation. Rosen h attended in residencies at the Visual Studies Workshop; Mauser Foundation, Costa Rica; 360 Xochi Quetzal, Mexico; Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; and Henry Street Settlement.

Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Cepa Gallery (Buffalo, NY), Five Myles Gallery (NYC), Webster University (Webster Groves, MO), Franklin Furnace (NYC), NYC Public Library, Grand Army Plaza (NYC), and Fairleigh Dickinson University (Madison, NJ). She has been included in recent group exhibitions at Burchfield-Penney Art Center (Buffalo, NY), Brooklyn Museum of Art (NYC), Museum of the City of New York (NYC), and Henry Street Settlement (NYC). Her work has been featured in the Village Voice, The New York Times, Pfizer Journal.

Rosen’s projects, In the Presence of Family: Brooklyn Portraits and Revisiting in the Presence of Family, documented families at street fairs highlighting biracial adoption, LGBTQ parenting and intermarriage, then revisited those families ten years later. These projects are permanently housed in the Brooklyn History Collection and libraries of Brooklyn Museum of Art and ICP. Rosen’s photographs are in collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art Library; Albright-Knox Gallery; and Burchfield-Penney Art Center, Buffalo.

In 2024, Rosen curated Capturing Dignity at El Barrio ArtSpace PS109, which featured five women photographers exploring themes of community in their work.


ARTIST STATEMENT

As a portrait photographer, I focus on capturing images that reveal the vitality and dignity of my subjects. The photographs from my Being Seen project acknowledge the power and strength of all women, and the importance of seeing the humanity in each one as a first step towards fostering empathy.

In the first part of my project, Being Seen, the photographs were taken during art and photography workshops I conducted with women who live in shelter in various cities in the United States. The women collaborated with me on their portraits which reflect the way they wanted to be seen—with strength and grace—but also reveal the instability, uncertainty and complexity connected with shelter living.

As my Being Seen project expanded, I conducted similar workshops for women who are tenants of a Brooklyn non-profit, HousingPlus, an organization that provides community-based housing and comprehensive services to women, gender diverse people, and their families, to assist them in overcoming homelessness, addiction, trauma, and the effects of incarceration. The images embody a personal power they work to achieve on a daily basis. In Rochester through the assistance of CCFCS, I captured images of middle eastern women who fled to the United States as well as recovering female addicts from Liberty Manor, a 24/7 drug treatment facility.
The images from my Being Seen project are presented as diptychs, pairing portraits with handwritten autobiographies fostering personal connections and bridging the emotional distance between marginalized individuals and broader society. These narratives reflect larger political realities, challenging the historical silencing of marginalized voices in mainstream media. Together, the portraits and stories reshape perceptions of feminine strength, furthering compassion and restoring agency to the women featured.