Roz Joseph

Who is Roz Joseph?

Roz Joseph is a photographer born in the Bronx, New York in 1926. She later studied photography in New York City. During the 1960s, Joseph photographed "sublime and transcendent little moments” while traveling in Europe, North Africa, and elsewhere. She is stylistically comparable to Henri Cartier-Bresson. She said, “without distortion or trickery I try to uncover the eloquence in what would otherwise appear to be ordinary, common situations, and thereby awaken sensitivities for fresh experiences.” During the 1960s, she shot almost exclusively in black and white and processed her silver gelatin prints in her own darkroom in New York City. In the mid-1960s, she won the grand prize in a photo competition run by the Saturday Review. The award allowed Roz to return to Europe to pursue more photography.

In 1970, Roz moved from New York City to San Francisco which she called a “color city.” She shifted to shooting exclusively in color film. Joseph began to examine two new subjects in her photography: abstracted architecture and city scenes, and the cross-dressing culture of San Francisco. These color architectural details became a series known as “City Art”.