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Robin Schwartz

Bio: Robin Schwartz's photographs are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian Museum of Art, Washington, D.C., The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Chrysler Museum of Art and the Bibliotheque Nationale.

Amelia's World , edited by Tim Barber, will be published by The Aperture Foundaton, fall 2008. Robin's has also authored two books of photographs, LIKE US: Primate Portraits, 1993,W. W. Norton and Company, New York and Dog Watching 1995, Takarajima Books, New York and Japan. + scroll down

Robin's photographs have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, People, Entertainment Weekly, Interview Magazines, The Photo District News and she has worked on assignment for Life and Sports Illustrated Magazines. Her black & white photographs of animals are included in over 30 books, including books by J.C. Suares, Michael Rosen, Ruth Silverman, Diana Edkins, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, Chronicle and Welcome Books. Schwartz's photographs have been published as postcards, posters and journels by Graphique De France, Galison, Fotofolio and The Brooklyn Museum of Art. Robin Schwartz is an assistant professor in photography at William Paterson University and lives in Hoboken, New Jersey with her husband, Robert Forman , daughter, Amelia and companion animals.
Collections: go to her site and click on Public Collections. (the site won't allow copy and paste.)
Statement:

Amelia’s World

My photographs are drawn from real journeys undertaken with my daughter, Amelia. I am driven to depict relationships with animals but the photographs are not documents; they are evidence of the invented worlds that we explore and the fables we enact together. Photography gives us the opportunity to access our dreams, to discover the extraordinary.

Animals and interspecies relationships have always been an important part of my work. The animals in my photographs are not represented as beasts or nobility but as part of our everyday world. My first monograph, a series of primates at home with humans, guided me to the places of my own childhood fantasies.

I photograph myself with animals through Amelia. I am an only child who has an only child. Each of us has a strong fantasy world. Amelia and I play out our eccentricities in worlds where she and animals not only co-exist, but also interact. Animals are not props in my photographs and they are not photo-shopped in. The world that my daughter and I explore is one where the line between human and animal overlaps or is blurred.

An artist photographing her child can invite ridicule, but getting personal with my projects has always been both my need and my edge. This project evolves with my daughter’s maturing personality and aptitude. Amelia is my priority, my muse, my co-conspirator, my tormentor and my bliss. Collaborating with Amelia, I am able to go to any place in time.

some family history...