Ann Rosen lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She studied photography, painting and printmaking at SUNY at Buffalo, NY and the Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY. Her early influences were Henri Matisse, Irving Penn and Helen Levitt. Matisse’ use of color inspired Rosen to paint and use abstraction in her photographs. Her love of portraiture developed as she became familiar with Penn’s stark black & white photographs of people posed in corners, and Helen Levitt’s street shots portraying human pathos and joy. Rosen was inspired to begin her life’s work, In the Presence of Family. This project, photographing families, has evolved through several stages commencing with hand-painted color photographs, moving to manipulated black & white images, onto color digital images and back to black & white digital photographs. It chronicles family diversity as exhibited through intermarriage, biracial adoption, integration, and same sex marriages.

Rosen received residencies to Artpark, NY and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, VA., and has been an artist-in-residence at the Henry Street Settlement, NYC.  In 2004, Rosen received a grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council to develop her project, In the Presence of Family and, in 2010, received an additional one to continue this project, creating a historic document pertaining to families. Exhibitions include Brooklyn Museum of Art, Appropriation & Syntax: The Use of Photography in Contemporary Art; Museum of the City of New York, New York Gets Married; and Henry Street Settlement, In-Sites VI: Making Our City Livable. Solo exhibitions include Franklin Furnace, NYC, Unlike in Characters, NYC Public Library, Grand Army Plaza, In the Presence of Family LIU, Resnick Gallery, In the Presence of Family, and Farleigh Dickenson University, In the Presence of Family.

Rosen’s most recent publication is her book, In the Presence of Family: Brooklyn Portraits, published in 2009. It is in the permanent library collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the International Center of Photography. Rosen’s work has been written about in the Village Voice; NY Times; Newark Sunday Star Ledger; Brooklyn Courier; Brooklyn Eagle; and the Pfizer Journal. In 2007, her portraits were featured in the 11th Annual Brooklyn Pride Magazine.  Rosen’s photographs and books are represented in numerous permanent collections including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; the Museum of Modern Art Library, NYC; the Albright-Knox Gallery and Library, Buffalo, NY; Burchfield-Penney Art Center, Buffalo, NY.