artist statement

Trix Rosen is a New York based artist and photojournalist who focuses on gender identity, ambiguity and transformation for much of her fine art photography.

Her profoundly intimate photographs of Takimi Yao, a cancer survivor who had undergone a double mastectomy, culminated in the exhibition, Changed Landscapes at The Elsa Mott Ives Gallery in New York:  “My images depict the odyssey of a woman who bravely explores the physical and emotional contours of her new form. These portraits in Changed Landscapes can be viewed as a narrative about Takami’s life and also as a defining moment of change. Bald, breast-less and scarred, she is as she appears to be – fearless and beautiful, essentially and eternally female.”

He-She is part of an ongoing series of portraits of French visual and performance artist, Frédéric Koenig:  “In my friendship and collaboration with Fréd, I found a kindred spirit and a powerful embodiment of the melding of male and female imagery.  Using flash-on-camera and studio lighting, my images combine candid, street portraits with more formal interiors, suggesting narratives about knowledge, illusion and perception along with provocative moments of truth. Enter into ‘Faust’s Study,’ a trompe l'oeil painted room, and be confronted by a fearless man who is empowered and transformed by the duality of his sexuality.  Or gaze on Frédéric in ‘Sacred Corset’ as he so naturally appears both handsome and beautiful, unselfconsciously daring the viewer to cross over boundaries of imagination and desires.

White Lace is a glimpse into the intimate world of women: candid pictures taken in those last few hours of preparation, as the dream and fairy-tale event of becoming a bride is realized and witnessed by a private circle of female friends and family.

Challenging stereotypes is a physical reality for the women bodybuilders depicted in STRONG AND SEXY: THE NEW BODY BEAUTIFUL (Delilah Publishers, New York) 1983. The book features eight photo-essays and accompanying profiles of women athletes and bodybuilders:  “I started working out with weights and photographing women in gyms and at the first women’s bodybuilding competitions in 1978. More than a dozen publishers looked at my project. I was repeatedly told, ‘Women will never have muscles, and if they do you should photograph them as freaks.’  I was determined to photograph the classic beauty of the muscular and strong female form.”

The girls in 100% Pure Heroine and The Ladies Room demand a new kind of female representation in history. “With the birth of gay liberation in 1969, we fearlessly took to the New York streets and collectively joined together to break taboos both politically and culturally.  Questioning the mass cultural representation of feminine identity, I photographed my friends and our unique style of dress and posing.  Androgyny became an idealized definition of gender. Sexual role playing tied into sexual politics. By the 80’s Lesbian chic had emerged as a style, blurring the differences between masculinity and femininity.”

“My fascination with The World of Dolls dates back to the gift of a very beautiful one that my father gave me when I was about seven-years-old.  I didn’t want a doll, and wished for a truck like my elder brother had. I still have it however, and have recently preserved her beauty with a trip to the doll hospital where I photographed some of these images. Curiously, many of my women friends have carried one or more dolls with them through their lives.”

“I travelled to the Ukraine to visit Odessa, the birthplace of my father. My trip became an exploration into the history of the once vast community of Eastern European Jews and the relics they had left behind. This odyssey started in Kiev at the ravine in Babi Yar, and took me to the tombs of Rabbi Nachman in Uman and the Ba'al Shem Tov in Medzhybizh, two historic Hasidic pilgrimage sites associated with the Kabbalah. I crisscrossed the heartland, over 2000 kilometers, to visit cities, towns, and shtetls, and to photograph the carved tombstones in cemeteries dating back to the 1400's. The Bet Hayyim - Houses of the Living, have become a portal to discovering my Jewish heritage, and the centuries of life, art and rituals which thrived here.”

Urban Archeology is a series of large-format digital art prints from restoration and HABS historic preservation projects for the Library of Congress: “My instinct has always been to find the story at the heart of every project. I look at the deeply etched memories in the stone and structures with the same passion that I look to the defining gesture and moment of truth in my portraits and documentary essays.”

E-mail: Trix@trixrosen.com
T: 212•228•8100