Trix Rosen Photography

DOCUMENTARY

‘The Song of the Land’

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Opening January 20 2012 – May 31 2012
Reception –  February 23 2012  5-7pm
Hebrew Union College, Institute of Religion, John H. Skirball Campus
3077 University Avenue
Los Angeles, Ca 90007-3796

Included in the ‘The Song of the Land’  Exhibition is a framed print from my
‘Bet Hayyim – House of Life’ series:


Title: Hands of the Kohan, Medzhybizh, Ukraine 2008
Medium: Fine Art Digital Inkjet Paper with Archival Pigmented Inks
Size:  10 inches x 15 inches
Framed: $700.00 – 16 inches x 20 inches
Edition 4/10

I viewed the thousands of stones in the Jewish cemeteries throughout the Ukraine as artistic treasures of iconographic beauty and mystery. The headstones of the Kohanim, descendants of the Biblical priests, had hands joined in a gesture of blessing. The carved gravestones depict a visual history of the once vast community of Eastern European Jews, and serve as reminders of the people who lived in this place and died.

As a historic preservation photographer, I document sites being bulldozed or restored. As a fine art photographer, I choose my destinations to record the poetics of a place. There is an urgency about what I photograph because each is a painful reminder of our inadequacy as cultural stewards. I am drawn to the timeless nature of historic architecture because it is a repository of collective memories. From its ever-evolving essence one can understand the sites’ creative and passionate link to humanity.

‘The Built Environment’

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Opening Dec 27th 2011 – January 21 2011
Reception –  Jan 8th 2012
Dark Room Gallery
12 Main Street, Essex Junction, VT 05452
Included in the ‘The Built Environment’ Exhibition is my print from the
Essex County Penitentiary series:


Title: Essex County Penitentiary, New Wing Corridor. North Caldwell, New Jersey.
Medium: Fine Art Digital Inkjet Paper with Archival Pigmented Inks
Size:  10 inches x 15 inches
Framed: $700.00 – 16 inches x 20 inches

As both a historic-preservation and fine-art photographer, I am drawn to the timeless nature of a historic site; it is a repository of collective memories like those etched and concealed within the interior walls of this rusting prison ruin.

It was a cold December day in 2007 when I first walked through the Essex County Penitentiary. My assignment was to photograph the 32-acre jail complex as part of a required HABS (Historic American Buildings Survey) documentation before the institutional structures and outbuildings, built between 1872 and 1929, could be demolished to make way for luxury condominiums. Photographing the “New Wing Corridor” was not part of the job, but the gritty prison hallway pulled me into an evocative still life of decaying iron bars and unhinged doors that allowed the silent voices of those once incarcerated to escape.

‘Becoming Who We Are’ Artist Talk

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‘BECOMING WHO WE ARE’
TRIX ROSEN, Project Director and INSIGHT OUT! PRIDE Workshop Participants
ARTIST TALK, Friday December 2, 2011
6 pm – 9 PM, Gallery 32

With a Special Performance by LADY JOI-ELLE
Hudson Pride Connections Center
32 Jones St., Jersey City, NJ 07306

Please join me, and the participants of the INSIGHT OUT! PRIDE Digital Storytelling Workshop for an Artist Talk and Panel Discussion about our photographs currently on view in “BECOMING WHO WE ARE,” a photo/video group exhibition curated by Ricardo Francis at Gallery 32, in Jersey City NJ.

The show features the work of Jasmin Brown, V. Michael Lazar, Natasha Phoenix Russell, Joi-Elle White, and Esteets Wright, students of the INSIGHT OUT! PRIDE Workshop along with guest international artists, Nadine Hutton (South Africa), and Fréd Koenig (France).

I will also present a short, historic retrospective of images that represent my GLBTQ social advocacy photography work from the ‘70’s and images depicting gender ambiguity and transformation. This visual memoir includes studio portraits of my female friends exploring erotic pleasure, role-playing and butch/femme identity.

Included will be pictures from recent photography exhibitions documenting my artistic collaboration with gender performance artist and videographer, Frédéric Koenig.

The INSIGHT OUT! PRIDE Digital Storytelling Workshop recently completed an eight-week pilot program at Hudson Pride Connections Center. The workshop is tailored to LGBTQ participants, and gives a visual voice to participants affected by growing up in environments of uncertainty, discrimination, fear and violence, and guides them to explore their creative vision. Each artist poignantly depicts images that mirror their personal views about masculinity, femininity and their LGBTQ identity. As they learn to document their own lives through photography, they grow in confidence and leadership skills, empower themselves and heal.

The workshops at the The Hudson Pride Connections Center were developed and adapted from my experiences as senior trainer, editor and advisor to the international InSIGHT Out! Photography and Creative Exchange Project, based in Bangkok, Thailand.

“Becoming Who We Are” Exhibition

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“BECOMING WHO WE ARE”
November 17 – December 19 2011
Opening Thursday November 17, 2011
6 PM – 9 PM, Gallery 32
Hudson Pride Connections Center
32 Jones St., Jersey City, NJ 07306
Gallery hours by appointment only

Trix Rosen, Project Director and Insight Out! Pride Workshop Participants
ARTIST TALK, Friday December 2, 2011
6 pm – 9 PM, Gallery 32
Hudson Pride Connections Center
32 Jones St., Jersey City, NJ 07306

You are cordially invited to “BECOMING WHO WE ARE,” a photo/video group exhibition featuring the work of Jasmin Brown, V. Michael Lazar, Nastasha Phoenix Russell, Joi-Elle White and Esteets Wright, participants in the InSIGHT OUT! Pride Digital Storytelling Workshop based at the Hudson Pride Connections Center. Their work is exhibited along with my own photos and those of my colleagues, international guest photography instructors Nadine Hutton (South Africa), and Frédéric Koenig (France).

The InSIGHT OUT! Digital Storytelling Workshops give a visual voice to participants growing up in environments of uncertainty, discrimination, fear and violence, and guide them to explore their creative vision. As they learn to document their own lives through photography, they grow in confidence and leadership skills, empower themselves and heal. This pilot workshop was tailored to LGBTQ participants and also designed to be a visual advocacy project.

The workshops at the Next Generation Center, Bronx, NY and NJ were developed and adapted from my experiences as senior trainer, editor and advisor to the international InSIGHT Out! Photography and Creative Exchange Project, based in Bangkok, Thailand.

Jersey City Artists Studio Tour – 2011

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[slideshow]

SUPPORT THE ARTS IN JERSEY CITY

Come on by and visit my studio during the Jersey City Artists Studio Tour
Saturday and Sunday – October 1st and 2nd
12 noon to 6 pm

Location:
Trix Rosen Photography Studio
124 Sherman Place (between Sanford Place and John F. Kennedy Blvd)
Jersey City, NJ 07307

While gender ambiguity and transformation have been the focus of my fine art photography, my career has also embraced the fields of photojournalism, portraiture and historic preservation architecture.

 

9-11 Revisited – Embodied Light Memory Block

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Jewish Art Salon Exhibit “9-11”
The Educational Alliance in New York will feature the Jewish Art Salon’s 9-11 Window Installation at the Ernest Rubinstein Gallery, in concert with Tobi Kahn’s exhibit Embodied Light, 9-11 in 2011.

Exhibit dates: September 14 – November 23, 2011
Hours: Best viewed in daylight.
Location: Ernest Rubenstein Gallery Windows
Jefferson Street near East Broadway, New York, NY 10002. F-train to East Broadway; MTA buses: M9, M15, M22

Jewish Art Salon members have created “memory blocks”, with drawings, paintings or inscriptions that evoke their memory of the day.

On September 13th, 6pm these blocks will be brought to the gallery, where Tobi Kahn is exhibiting “Embodied Light: 9-11 in 2011”. Artists and writers will share their block and/or their memories of 9-11 and Kahn will discuss his exhibit. After the session, at 8pm, the blocks will be gathered and the next day they will be installed as “towers” in the windows.

Kahn’s exhibit will feature 220 memory blocks, handed out by him to various New Yorkers and returned to him with markings that commemorate the day. These blocks will be continually rearranged over the length of the exhibition. The Jewish Art Salon’s blocks will be displayed as a separate exhibit.

Go to Jail – The Essex County Penitentiary

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The Main building of the Essex County Penitentiary stood alone on the hilltop, her battered façade illuminated by the setting sun. Five years earlier I had spent more than a month

systematically photographing the 32 acre jail complex as part of a required HABS (Historic American Buildings Survey) documentation before the institutional structures and outbuildings built between 1872 and 1929 could be demolished to make way for modern condominiums.

It was a cold December day in 2007 when I first walked through the dank prison in North Caldwell, New Jersey. The eerily silent jail complex appeared like a forbidding rusted ruin concealing deeply etched memories of its ghostly inhabitants within the walls.

My first job was to design a shot list that would become the basis for my final (107) 4” x 5” b/w film documentation. During my walk-through with architectural historian Ken Kalmis, I composed hundreds of digital images for reference.

The cell blocks, corridors, commissary kitchen, dining hall, holding pens and Power House were enormous spaces, and the light filtering through the oversize dirty and broken windows created a chiaroscuro effect on the floors and walls.
 
To capture the details, the patterns and textures in the highlights and shadows, and to tell the evocative story of each room was a challenge.
 

The solutions demanded a photojournalist’s insight to stay true to the narrative, lighting skills to creatively equate ambient light and fill flash, and knowledge of the guidelines for the long-term preservation of historic documentation.

On Tuesday, September 6, at 7:30pm, I will be presenting a slide show of images from my historic documentation of the Essex County Penitentiary at the Verona Historical Society. Local historian Robert Williams will guide you through the mysteries and legends associated with the buildings and property which were recently demolished. Numerous items salvaged from the buildings will be on display and prisoners will speak once again thru the tell-tale signs they left behind for us to find.

The meeting is scheduled at the Verona Community Center, 880 Bloomfield Ave., at 7:30 p.m. For more information you can email the Society at twoJVO@yahoo.com or call (973) 857-1968.

You will not want to miss this event–everyone is promised to leave with something to remember this important landmark and fully understand the contribution it made to our history.