Chronology

1930
Born Rosalind Fox, April 2, 1930 in Highland Park, Illinois.

1951
Graduated from Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. She went to Belgium and France with The Experiment in International Living.

1953 – 1960
In 1953 Rosalind Fox married and moved from Chicago, Illinois to Chattanooga, Tennessee. She had a son, Joel, in 1954 and a daughter, Linda, in 1956.

1961 – 1976
In 1961, Rosalind Solomon was Regional Director of The Experiment in International Living and visited communities throughout the Southern United States recruiting host families to receive international guests. In 1968 the organization arranged for her to stay with a family near Tokyo. While in Japan, Solomon used a Kodak Instamatic and made color slides.

Solomon began to photograph regularly. She purchased a Nikkormat in 1969 and set up a home darkroom to process black and white pictures. In 1974, Solomon began intermittent studies with Lisette Model during visits to New York City. At the time, Solomon was photographing damaged dolls, as well as people, at a monthly market in Scottsboro, Alabama, and Model advised her to work with both a 35 millimeter and a 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 inch camera in order to master the medium-format camera. In 1975 and 1976 she used a Mamiya 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 inch camera to photograph patients in Chattanooga, Tennessee at the Baroness Erlanger Hospital and in Sicily. One of the Sicily photographs, a hooded boy, was the first of Rosalind Solomon's images to be exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

1977 – 1979
Solomon acquired the Hasselblad which she continues to use. She lived and worked in Washington, where she made pictures of artists and politicians and completed a series, "Outside the White House." She traveled to the Guatemala Highlands during this period and photographed rural people and rituals.

1980 – 1986
In 1980, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, exhibited "Rosalind Solomon: Washington," with an accompanying catalogue, and the Sander Gallery in Washington showed "Rosalind Solomon, Photographs." Solomon received a Guggenheim Fellowship,which supported her work in Brazil and Peru. She made Carnival, an edition of four albums with collaged covers, and a boxed assemblage, Corazón. She returned to Peru in 1981 and 1982, photographing, shooting super 8 film and making tape recordings. In 1981 – 1983, the American Institute of Indian Studies, a major organization supporting scholarly and artistic work in Southeast Asia, awarded her fellowships to photograph Indian festivals. George Eastman House, Rochester, NY, exhibited and toured "Rosalind Solomon: India" which then traveled to the Smithsonian's American Museum of Natural History in Washington DC and other venues. The American Centers in India exhibited another group of Solomon's India pictures in New Delhi, Madras, Bombay and Calcutta.

Rosalind Solomon divorced in 1984 and moved to lower Manhattan where she built her darkroom and studio. She produced two installation pieces, Adiós and Catacombs. In 1985 she photographed the earthquake aftermath in Mexico City, and in 1986 she took a series of New York street portraits and a series of portraits outside Buddhist temples in Katmandu. The artist's unique album, Along the Road, evolved from her experience in Nepal. In 1986, the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, California, mounted an exhibition of eighty-six Solomon works with a catalogue, "Rosalind Solomon, Earthrites." Another exhibition, "Rosalind Solomon, Ritual," opened later that year at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

1987 – 1994
In 1987, Solomon photographed people with AIDS in the USA. In 1988 Grey Art Gallery, New York University mounted a solo exhibition of these pictures and published the catalogue, Portraits in the Time of AIDS. From 1988 to 1990, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts helped support her work in South Africa and in Dublin and Belfast, Ireland. She also traveled to Agua de Dios, Colombia, where she photographed people with Hansen’s Disease. During this time she also worked on a survivors' project in Poland,
Yugoslavia, Cambodia, and Cuba and lived part-time in New Orleans where she photographed musicians and festivals.

1995 – 2003
During this period, Solomon photographed in Peru for five months. In 1996, Lima's El Museo de Arte presented Solomon's pictures in "Peru y Otros Lugares - Peru and Other Places." A catalogue accompanied the exhibition, which included her Peru work from the eighties and the nineties as well as other pictures from locations in Latin America, India and the United States.

In 1998 she traveled to Tibet and revisited India and Nepal. During that year, Solomon finished her video piece, To Highlands, incorporating early 80’s super 8 film and mid-90’s video footage from Peru, Tibet and Highland Park, Illinois. In 1999, Solomon traveled to Israel and also visited Jordan. In 2000 – 2001, Solomon photographed in the USA, Italy and Peru. Yaddo awarded Rosalind Solomon the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur residency. While at Yaddo, she completed the selection of pictures for Chapalingas, worked on the texts, and photographed artists. In 2002, she was awarded residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire and at Blue Mountain Center, Blue Mountain Lake, New York. During her two-month residency at the MacDowell Colony, she sequenced the Chapalingas images, continued her self-portraits, photographed artists and began writing Grave Mail. She was appointed a MacDowell Colony National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. In 2003 Solomon was invited back to MacDowell and was selected Ray and Abraham Gottlieb Fellow. During the year, she photographed people and sites in Poland; Ladakh, India; and British Columbia, Canada. In the Spring, Die Photographische Sammlung exhibited her pictures in Cologne, Germany. Die Photographische Sammlung and Steidl Verlag co-published the accompanying catalogue, Chapalingas, in English, German and French with 201 full-page reproductions.

2004 – 2010
In 2004, The Musee Nicephore Niepce showed 100 of her American pictures from Chapalingas in Chalon-sur-Saone, France. She traveled there to help install the show and to speak at the opening. In addition, Solomon focused on production for her upcoming monograph, Polish Shadow, released by Steidl in 2006. She photographed in Poland in 1988 and 2003.

Solomon spent most of 2005 working on her extensive archives in her New York studio. She also returned to Yaddo to sequence pictures for Polish Shadow. During this ongoing work, Solomon also found time to return to Peru and to make a first trip to Argentina. She photographed in Peru for the 9th time since 1980, and took pictures in Paris and New York as well.

In 2005, the New York-based Foley Gallery began representing Solomon. In 2006, the Foley Gallery ran the solo exhibition: “Rosalind Solomon, American Pictures from Chapalingas.”

In 2006, Solomon continued her travels, photographing in Berlin and later traveling to Vienna for the opening of “Americans: Masterpieces of American Photography from 1940 until Now.” From November 2006 to February 2007, Solomon’s work is exhibited along with12 American greats including Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Robert Frank Lee Friedlander, Helen Levitt, and Gordon Parks.

In 2007, Solomon traveled and photographed in Hanoi. Her large donation to the Center for Creative Photography was completed. This donation from her archive included photographs, papers, videotapes, and slides. The Rosalind Solomon archive is being catalogued and will be open for study and research in 2010.

In 2008, Solomon briefly re-visited Cambodia and Thailand. Inside Out, her first show at Bruce Silverstein. Exhibited were fifty of her photographs, Catacombs, an installation and a video, Don’t Eat my Centerpiece. She spent time working in and around Barcelona, Spain

In 2009, Solomon’s photographs appeared in the Aperture exhibition, Lisette Model and Her Successors, which traveled nationally and internationally.(mention some venues) She attended Fran Quinn’s monthly New York Poetry Workshop. She continued working in Barcelona;shot and directed A Woman I Once Knew, an 8-minute movie, with Jason Eckardt’s composition 16. The piece was edited by Robyn Braun and Michael Bloch. Footage also includes 1998 scenes filmed by the artist in India.

In 2010, Adding to the body of work she began in Hanoi, Solomon photographed in Ho Chi Minh City. She completed ”A Woman I Once Knew”. Bruce Silverstein exhibited Rosalind Solomon Ritual and screened ”A Woman I Once Knew”.

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