Support Independent Arts Journalism As an independent publication, we rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, consider becoming a member today . Already a member? Sign in here.
Support Hyperallergic’s independent arts journalism for as little as $8 per month. Become a Member Photographer Rosalind Fox Solomon was not afforded the opportunity to come into her own as an artist until her early 50s. For this reason, the visual component of A Woman I Once Knew — a decades-long archive of unflinching self-portraits from an artist heralded for her portraits of others — begins only in Solomon’s midlife.
But the text of the book, written by Solomon herself, traces her life to its origins. With a remarkable economy of language, the volume lays out a nonagenarian life story containing an entire range of human experience, accompanied by images that strikingly and unapologetically highlight the aging female form. Solomon was initially thwarted from her earliest inclinations toward reflection and self-expression by generational expectations: She was born in 1930 to a family of traditional aspirations in Highland Park, Illinois.
After jettisoning her passion for reading and writing and marrying a Southern man nine years her senior who stringently limited the axis of her career outside their family; after bearing two children by C-section and balancing their upbringing with political volunteering and local activism; af.
