Rosalind Fox Solomon, a pioneering figure in photography and portraiture, died peacefully surrounded by family at NYU Langone Hospital on June 23 at 1 AM.
Fox Solomon traveled the world to find her subjects, from Latin America to India, with a curiousness and intuition that gained her access into closed circles and communities. She was an iconic cultural figure who lived in her downtown loft for forty years, photographing in the neighboring Washington Square Park. To Fox Solomon, metaphors and symbols existed everywhere, in the events taking place on the streets and in the profound and intimate moments she shared with her subjects.
Born in Highland Park, Illinois in 1930, Fox Solomon graduated from Goucher College in Maryland before marrying Joel Warren (Jay) Solomon and moving to Chattanooga, Tennessee. There, she raised two children, her daughter, Linda, and son, Joel, while cultivating an interest in cross-cultural understanding. Her work with the Experiment inInternational Living brought her to Japan in 1968, where she began experimenting with photography. At the age of 38, she began photographing as a career, traveling to New York City to study with the influential photographer Lisette Model.
Fox Solomon's early work in Chattanooga was later published in her 2018 book Liberty Theater. The title references one of the last segregated cinemas in Chattanooga owned by the family business and remains one of Fox Solomon’s most celebrated publications. From the 1970s to the 2000s, Fox Solomon photographed the American South. From Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Florida, the images in Liberty Theater were compiled with an awareness of social class, the entitled, and the repressed, portraying thoughts of slavery and the Civil War as related to the present. Fox Solomon’s empathy, combined with her use of medium format photography and her direct approach where subjects loom large within the square format, emphasized the psychological and societal aspects of this series. “I made these photographs with an interest in portraying both the beauty and sadness that I saw around me. Though many were taken around the mid-20th century; others came later. I am dismayed that in some ways they resonate today,” Fox Solomon said.
In 1979, Fox Solomon was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, which allowed her to expand her practice internationally. She photographed in Guatemala, Peru, India, South Africa, and beyond. These journeys culminated in numerous exhibitions, most notably the Museum of Modern Art’s Rosalind Fox Solomon: Ritual, a solo exhibition in 1986 dedicated to her work that solidified her status as a major figure in contemporary photography.
Perhaps her most widely recognized and impactful work came during the height of the AIDS crisis. In the 1980s, Solomon photographed what became Portraits in the Time of AIDS, a series of deeply affecting portraits that gave visibility and dignity to those living with the disease at a time when fear and stigma were rampant. New York University’s Grey Gallery of Art exhibited the series in 1988, and it was exhibited again in 2015 in the Salon d’Honneur of the Grand Palais during the Paris Photo art fair where it resonated with a new generation of viewers.
Throughout her career, Fox Solomon received numerous honors, including the 2016 Lucie Award for Achievement in Portraiture and the 2019 Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement from the International Center of Photography. Fox Solomon has shown in nearly 30 solo exhibitions and 100 group exhibitions and her photographs are in the collections of over 50 museums around the world, including the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; Center for Creative Photography, Tucson; George Eastman House, Rochester; Metropolitan Museum, New York; Museo de Arte de Lima; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington; National Gallery ofCanada, Ontario; Photographische Sammlung, Cologne; San Francisco Museum ofModern Art; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Fox Solomon remained active well into her nineties. Her final publication, A Woman I Once Knew (2024), is a poignant blend of memoir and self-portraits that traces the arc of a life lived with intensity, curiosity, and artistic bravery. Other books of her photographs include, Got to Go (2016), THEM(2014), Polish Shadow (2006) and Chapalingas (2003). In addition to photography, she has performed her own texts and poetry on video and in multimedia installations. She had residencies at the Banff Center, Blue Mountain Center, the MacDowell Colony, and the Corporation of Yaddo.
Fox Solomon is survived by her children Joel Solomon and Linda Solomon Wood, their spouses Dana Solomon and David Wood, and her grandchildren Eli, Lev, Noelle, Jaya, Kiran, Dusty, Garrett and Trever.
She will be deeply missed.
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