Rosalind Fox Solomon, an American artist celebrated for her incisive portraits, will be returning to Paris Photo this fall after exhibiting her award-winning series Portraits in the Time of AIDS in the Salon d’Honneur in 2015.
The MUUS Collection will be presenting Rosalind Fox Solomon: The Early Work, an exhibition dedicated to one of the artist’s earliest projects, made in the 1970s at the Scottsboro Alabama First Mondays Market. At the age of 40, Solomon began experimenting with photography and captured life around Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she was living at the time. Soon, she began photographing the flea market in Scottsboro, first focusing her lens on the broken dolls, then on vendors, and finally on other frequenters of the market.
Curated by Photo Elysée Director Nathalie Herschdorfer, the MUUS Collection’s exhibition is dedicated to unveiling Solomon’s foundations and demonstrating how portraits at a simple flea market in Scottsboro would go on to inform the rest of her artistic career. “While going through her work, I wanted to understand how her biting gaze was born,” says Herschdorfer. “This series shows that Solomon is, from her beginnings, an accomplished photographer who does not turn away from her subjects.”
In addition to her AIDS series, Solomon has been lauded for her portraits across the American South, India, Brazil, and beyond. With work spanning over 50 years, Solomon aims to depict her subjects with unflinching honesty in the vein of works by humanist photographers like Lisette Model, whom she studied under. Today, at the age of 92, Solomon remains active in her artistic work.
As custodians of preeminent photography archives, the MUUS Collection is proud to present Solomon’s work at Paris Photo, following the presentation of Deborah Turbeville in 2021. The MUUS Collection preserves, studies, and shares these important works through exhibitions, publications, grants, and donations. Together, these efforts serve to build greater legacies and transform the narratives of artists whose work has historically been underrecognized.
Learn more about Rosalind Fox Solomon: The Early Work at parisphoto.com and the MUUS Collection at muuscollection.com.
