TRIX ROSEN PHOTOGRAPHY – TRIXSPIX

Art Exhibitions

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

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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 facade illuminated by the setting sun. Five years earlier, I had spent more than a month

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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.

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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.

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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.essexcountyprisoneastbuilding 1

The cell blocks, corridors, commissary kitchen, dining hall, holding pens, and Power house were enormous spaces, and the light filtering through the oversized dirty and broken windows created a chiaroscuro effect on the floors and walls.
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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.

powerhouse machinary working in Prisons in Essex photography by trix rosen

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 7:30 pm, 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 through 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 [email protected] 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.

Brooklyn – Heights

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Brooklyn – Heights
June 3rd – July 1 2011

Distillery Gallery and Art Space
7 Hutton Street
Jersey City, NJ 07307

It was a bitterly cold December day in 2006 when I first walked through the Essex County Prison in North Caldwell, New Jersey. I had been hired to photograph over 100 4×5 film images of the Jail Annex complex (builit in the 1870’s), using the HABS (Historic American Buildings Survey) guidelines set up by the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, before the 32-acre site was to be demolished. Although the sun was bright, the deserted prison complex appeared like a forbidding ruin with concealed memories etched deeply into the stone walls.

In the Distillery Gallery

essex county state penitentiary, main prison building photography by trix rosen
Essex County State PenitentiaryMain Prison Building, photography by trix rosen

Exhibitions are two of these images that reveal unspoken stories about the buildings and the thousands of imprisoned, now ghostly inhabitants.

Their presence is felt, not only in the discarded objects, graffiti drawings, and magazine pin-ups that remained attached to the cell walls, but in the very essence of the structures themselves.

‘Don’t Tell Me What To Do’

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‘Don’t Tell Me What To Do’
May 4th – May 28th 2011

The Illusionist lgbtq-trix rosen photograpghy

Susan Maasch Fine Art Gallery
567 Congress Street
Portland ME 04101

“What would you show if you had no inhibitions? Do you have something that [is]… too personal? Too raw? Show us that image. If you could say ‘screw you, don’t tell me what to do…,’ what would it look like?” challenged Gallery Director, Susan Maasch and Photo Curator, Ryan S. Tirrell in the prospectus for the photography exhibition DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO.

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