3 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Rosalind Fox Solomon, Whose Photos Captured Emotional Nuance, Dies at 95
Rosalind Fox Solomon, a photographer whose penetrating black-and-white portraits shot in the American South, Israel and diverse spots around the globe earned her the admiration of critics and a place in the world's most prestigious museums, died on Monday in Manhattan. She was 95.
Her death, in a hospital, was announced by the MUUS Collection, a photography archive that houses her work.
Ms. Fox Solomon was sometimes compared to Diane Arbus, and like Arbus, she studied with the great Austrian émigré photographer Lisette Model.
But unlike her more famous peer, Ms. Fox Solomon captured sometimes off-putting subjects with a warm intensity that infused them with humanity, even if they appeared strange or unappealing at first glance.
The white woman in 'Poke Bonnet, First Mondays, Scottsboro, Alabama' (1976), in Ms. Fox Solomon's 2018 book, 'Liberty Theater,' appears pleased with herself and overconfident, potentially queasy attributes given the time and place. Like the subjects of Ms. Fox Solomon's other portraits, she dominates the frame. But she is not an Arbus freak, nor is she grotesque. She is a familiar sort of woman in early middle age, not a caricature of a white Southerner.
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