The exhibition showcases one of the artist’s earliest projects, made between 1972 and 1976, devoted to Scottsboro Alabama’s First Monday market. At the age of 40, Solomon had begun experimenting with photography and started to capture life around Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she was living at the time. She regularly attended the flea market in Scottsboro and began to photograph it, first focusing her lens on broken dolls, then on vendors, and finally on other frequenters of the market. Solomon’s incisive portraits attracted the attention of Lisette Model, whom she had met in New York in 1971, and she soon began studying under Model’s tutelage to hone her craft. Solomon’s first photographs were taken with a 35 mm camera, but she soon switched to the square format that she would remain faithful to through- out her career. Rosalind Fox Solomon: The Early Work offers the most complete survey of this series ever presented to the public.
Rosalind Fox Solomon: The Early Work has been curated by Nathalie Herschdorfer from the Rosalind Fox Solomon Collection at MUUS. Herschdorfer is an author of numerous books and a curator specializing in photography. She is the Director of Photo Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Image: Getting Ready for the Dance, Scottsboro, Alabama, 1976
