Joan Roth

Joan Roth (born Joan Louise Altman on August 4, 1942 in Detroit ) is an American photographer . She is known for her documentation of life in the Jewish diaspora , especially the world of Jewish women.

life and work

family

Joan Roth grew up in a Jewish family . She was the daughter of Clara June Rubin Altman and Albert Jay Altman. She had an older sister, Marjorie Ruth, and an older brother, Burton Lee. Her mother was born in New York; her maternal grandmother came from Breslau . Her father was born in Ukraine . In New York he worked as a dentist . Both parents came from Orthodox Jewish families; Joan and her siblings were raised religiously. From 1963 to 1971 Joan Roth was married to Jac Roth. They have two daughters together: Melanie Jo, born in 1964, and Alison Jae, born in 1966. Roth has been married to Leonard Sanders since 1998. The couple live in New York.

education

In 1968 Joan Roth began studying film at New York University , but made an early decision to switch to photography. She learned the technical basics in the studio of the photographer Josef Schneider . Artistically she influenced the photographers Diane Arbus , of whom she saw an exhibition in 1972, and Lisette Model . With Lisette Model Roth attended courses at the New School for Social Research in New York, as well as with George Tice , Philippe Halsman and Marie Cosindas . She worked for Sid Kaplan for a few years , who from then on took over the printing of her photographs.

Artistic work

Joan Roth's project Shopping Bag Ladies of New York , on which she worked for eight years and which she completed in 1982, showed the world of homeless women.

In 1984 she accompanied Operation Moses , during which large parts of Beta Israel , the Jewish population of Ethiopia , were flown to Israel during a famine . Roth documented her journey and arrival in Israel. This resulted in the exhibition The Jews of Ethiopia - A People in Transition , which was shown at the Jewish Museum in New York and at Beit Hatefutsot in Tel Aviv .

Roth's next project was the book Jewish Women. A World of Tradition and Change . She traveled around the world for over twelve years and documented the lives of Jewish women in Ethiopia, Yemen , Israel , Morocco , India , Uzbekistan , Ukraine , Hungary , Romania and Bulgaria .

In addition to the Jewish Museum, Joan Roth's photographs were shown in the Brooklyn Museum and the International Center of Photography .

Publications

• 1982: Shopping Bag Ladies of New York
• 1995: Jewish Women. A World of Tradition and Change
• 1997: Famous Jewish Women in History (with Judith Reesa Baskin and Sanford L. Batkin)
• 2003: Jews of Ethiopia. Last Days of an Ancient Community

Web links

• Literature by and about Joan Roth in the WorldCat bibliographic database
• Joan Roth's publisher Jolen Press
• Joan Roth in the Jewish Women's Archive (English)