TRIX ROSEN PHOTOGRAPHY – TRIXSPIX

Deleware Water Gap National Park Endangered Houses

Breaking Through Tradition

by

“Photographer Trix Rosen’s work about gender ambiguity empowers the viewer to question conventional definitions of beauty and remind us it is more important to define our own personal beauty rather than being defined by others.”
Maureen Harrison and Alexsandra Simakowicz, Curators, BREAKING THROUGH TRADITION

BREAKING THROUGH TRADITION
April 3 – May 3, 2014
Opening Reception: April 3, 2014, 7 pm-9 pm
Pierro Gallery, Baird Center, 5 Mead Street, South Orange, NJ 07079

Please join me at the Pierro Gallery in South Orange, NJ, for BREAKING THROUGH TRADITION, a group show celebrating the American cultural transition towards inclusivity.

The Sea Change

My HE-SHE portfolio presents an ongoing series of portraits documenting my seventeen-year collaboration with French artist Fred Koenig, who unselfconsciously dares the viewer to cross over boundaries of imagination and desires. Observe him in ‘The Sea Change’ and be confronted by a fearless man who is empowered and transformed by the ambiguity of his sexuality.

‘Ravaged’ presents Fred within the decaying landscape of a New Jersey historic farmhouse. Perhaps this intimate pose and an abandoned structure lay bare a similar beauty and vulnerability.

Fred_Koenig_09.07.12

Fred and I collaborate not just in our art but in our political activism. Talking about his HIV/AIDS status, Fred told me that it is part of what he shows me by exposing his soul to my camera.

‘Changed Landscapes’ also reveals a figure who has dared me to look deeper because she wasn’t afraid.  Here is a woman who bravely explores the physical and emotional contours of her new form after a double mastectomy.

Bald, breast-less transgender boudoir photograph-trix rosen photograph

This portrait can be viewed as a narrative about her life and as a defining moment of transfiguring change. Bald, breast-less, and scarred, she is fearless and beautiful, essentially and eternally female.

These images record biographical moments, measured not as isolated fragments of time, but revealing the narrative arc of both Fred and Takami’s life. They are capturing the past, recording the present and projecting into the future. How courageous and optimistic to look inward and become stronger through the experience.

I hope to see you at the opening of BREAKING THROUGH TRADITION on April 3, 7 pm-9 pm
Pierro Gallery, Baird Center, 5 Mead Street, South Orange, NJ 07079

Celebrating January 2014 & Art Connections 10 Exhibition!

by

Opening Reception: Sunday, January 26, 2014, 2:00-5:00 pm
Montclair State University – George Segal Gallery, Montclair NJ 07043

I can thank my parents for January being the month of my birth and Curator Marilyn Symmes for choosing two of my images, Peeling Back the Layers and Endangered Oakley Stoll House, to be in  ‘ART Connections 10’ at the George Segal Gallery, Montclair State University in NJ. This marks the first exhibition that represents my gender in fine art photography along with my architectural series of endangered houses. Both images record historical moments, measured not as isolated fragments of time, but as tangible and intangible exposures, revealing the narrative arc of my subject’s life/capturing past, recording present, and projecting into the future.

Peeling Back the Layers

Peeling Back the Layers. Montague NJ, 2012, 27H x 18W inches,
Framed 31H x 23W inches,  Fine Art Digital Inkjet Paper with Archival Pigmented Inks

Endangered Historic Houses-Delaware Water Gap National Recreation
Endangered Historic Houses- Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, NJ

Endangered Oakley Stoll House. Walpack Twp. NJ, 2012, 27H x 18W inches,
Framed 31H x 23W inches,  Fine Art Digital Inkjet Paper with Archival Pigmented Inks

For Peeling Back the Layers, gender performance artist Fred Koenig, clad only in panties, stockings, and high heels, is framed by the antique peeling wallpaper and decaying wood molding of the historic Hornbeck/Roberts House in Montague, NJ. Owned by the National Park Service, this eighteenth-century farmhouse,e along with the Endangered Oakley Stoll House, is located within the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. These historically important houses are now sadly vandalized and trashed.

Whether I shoot a portrait or an endangered architectural site, what haunts me is finding the essence of the visible and invisible timeline. I look for the quintessential moment that can be revealed in the stillness of a decaying wall or in the expression of gender duality. Perhaps both Fred’s openly exposed gesture and these two endangered houses lay bare a beautiful and similar vulnerability.

ART Connections 10
Montclair State University – George Segal Gallery
1 Normal Avenue, Montclair, NJ 07043
Gallery Hours: T, W, F, Sat 10:00 – 5:00 pm & Thurs 12:30 – 7:30 pm
Opening Reception: Sunday, January 26, 2014, 2:00-500 pm
Exhibition Dates: January 26- February 22, 2014

TREASURED: Honoring Precious and Vanishing Worlds

by

(To view in the browser, click here)

TREASURED: HONORING PRECIOUS AND VANISHING WORLDS is an exhibition at the Annmarie Sculpture Garden and Arts Center in Solomons, MD, that features three prints from my fine art portfolios: Bet Hayyim (House of the Living) and Endangered Historic Houses.
The art exhibit opens on June 15 and continues to August 26, 2012.

Title: Hands of the Kohan.  Medzhybizh, Ukraine, 2008, Edition: 3/10
12 x 18 inches, Fine Art Paper with Archival Pigmented Inks

old jews cemeteries photography by trix rosen

Title: Kohans, Levites and the Star of David.  Chernivtsi, Ukraine, 2008, Edition:3/10
12 x 18 inches,  Fine Art Paper with Archival Pigmented Inks

In 2008, I crisscrossed the heartland of the Ukraine to photograph historic Jewish cemeteries and hand-carved tombstones in cities, towns and shtetls. Every site had a story to tell and each stone was an artistic treasure filled with iconographic beauty and mystery. The headstones of the Kohanim, descendants of the Biblical priests, had hands joined in a gesture of blessing. The pitcher pouring water represented the tribe of Levites, the assistants to the priests. Some epitaphs were intricately carved, the stones decorated in an elaborate Jewish script covering the entire surface; others held only the most minimal outline of the Star of David. Other friezes depicted symbols of lineage and gender. These gravestones, some dating from the 1400s, 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.

delaware water gap historic houses NJ vernacular architecture

Title: Shattered Spaces. 2012
Edition: 3/10
12 x 18 inches, Fine Art Paper with Archival Pigmented Inks

Less than two years ago the Shoemaker-Houck Farm was in excellent condition, one of the premier structures located within the New Jersey Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area that is owned by the National Park Service. The front portion of the house was built in 1822, while the rear portion was built in the eighteenth century. This National Register Site has no protection and has now become vandalized. The back door is wide open, and the window glass is missing, sadly revealing the ruins of neglect. These scarred elements are key to understanding the rural development of northwestern New Jersey and the significant role that area played in American history.

I am drawn to the timeless nature of historic architecture because it is a repository of collective memories – a record of our heritage, the builders and the people who once inhabited these spaces. There is an urgency about what I photograph because each derelict site is a reminder of our inadequacy as cultural stewards. I look to the architectural details, to the deeply etched memories in the stones, the walls and the structures as a window to remembering our past.

Product
Just Purchased
About ago