Claire Rosen

Early life

Born in New York in 1983, Claire Rosen is the eldest daughter of Dolly and Edward Rosen. Her mother is a culinary historian specializing in Victorian-era cake baking, and her father is a banking and intellectual property lawyer who interested Rosen in philosophy and the Socratic method from an early age. She has younger sisters whom she would drape in sheets and pose as Greek goddesses in the family's backyard when they were children. Her mother read to them from Grimm's Fairy Tales, Beatrix Potter, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and L. Frank Baum. Rosen was also taken on frequent trips to the zoo, the circus, and the Museum of Natural History, which fostered a love of animals and taxidermy that has carried into her art.

Rosen dropped out of three high schools. As a youth she was interested in art, but didn't express herself visually until college when she took her first photography class.

Rosen attended Bard College at Simon's Rock, where she tried photography for the first time. She graduated with a liberal arts degree in 2003. She attended Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), where she learned technical skills and met Steve Aishman, a physicist-turned-photo instructor who became a mentor to Rosen. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Photography in 2006.

Rockport

Rosen moved to Maine after graduating from SCAD to complete a three-month internship with Joyce Tenneson at the Maine Media Workshops in Rockport. Following the internship, Rosen remained in Rockport to manage Tenneson's studio for two and a half years. It was there that Rosen began reading the works of Karl Jung, Freud, Joseph Campbell, and Bruno Bettelheim, which have subsequently impacted her work. She met Cig Harvey, who became a role model for Rosen. It was also during this time that Rosen created Fairy Tales and Other Stories, which is a series of self-portraits, and Dolls in the Attic.

New York

In 2009, Rosen moved back to New York and began working independently as a fine artist. She exhibited photos from her two series in juried shows. Fairy Tales received attention, and some images were licensed by magazines to run alongside articles. This marked the beginning of Rosen's crossover into commercial work, whereupon she began creating commissioned images for book covers, clothing designers, and other organizations. To date, Rosen has created commissioned work for Alex Randall Chandeliers, Ryan Wilde Millinery, Sofistafunk Skirt Co., and a number of other businesses and magazines.

The Millbrook Collection

In 2010, Rosen photographed the vintage taxidermy in the collection of the Millbrook School in Dutchess County, where she was an artist in residence. The collection contained 10,000 eggs, and approximately 500 taxidermied animals, birds, and reptiles, dating back to the early 20th century. Rosen photographed the collection against a black background, using dramatic lighting.

Birds of a Feather

Birds of a Feather is Rosen's most widely seen photographic series. Rosen attributes the extremely positive response to the series to its beauty and sense of humor. The images feature portraits of exotic birds against coordinating wallpaper backgrounds. The series alludes to the Victorian Era, when collecting and displaying birds was fashionable. Rosen explained of the series:

The Industrial Revolution and colonization created this disconnect from nature in the Victorian Era and yielded an awareness of faraway places, amazing creatures, and unfamiliar cultures… This series references that desire to possess the beautiful and exotic.

Birds of a Feather was created in 2012. It includes common pets like parakeets, as well as exotics like the Hyacinth Macaw. Rosen discovered Bird Paradise, the "largest exotic bird superstore," in New Jersey while trying to find a toucan to photograph for a commercial project, and was inspired to do a photoshoot with the birds in the store. She created sample images with her own pet parakeets. The photos were set up as portraits with traditional portrait lighting. Rosen brought 200 sheets of wallpaper from Waterhouse Wallhangings' scrap pile to serve as backgrounds for the portraits. Friend Tom Pisano assisted with the photoshoot, handling the birds.

An image of a toucan was later shot in Honduras and added to the series in 2014.

Fantastical Feasts

In 2014, Rosen created a photo series entitled Fantastical Feasts, which features animals eating around banquet tables in compositions that allude to Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. Each photo in the series features a different species—including elephants, tapirs, sloths, miniature ponies, goats, mice, parakeets, honey bees, hedgehogs, etc.—eating the foods it prefers. Ron Haviv, New York photojournalist and owner of VII photo agency, assisted with the project. Rebecca Manson, New York expert retoucher, worked with Rosen on the images.

Ed Schoenfield, New York restaurateur, commissioned Rosen to photograph a duck feast for his restaurant after seeing the series.

Lectures

Rosen has taught workshops around the world through multiple organizations, including B&H, Gulf Photo Plus, SCAD, and Hallmark Institute.

Personal life

At the encouragement of Beth Taubner, creative consultant of Mercurylab, Rosen researched her ancestry and discovered that her maternal grandfather, who died when Dolly was sixteen, was a fashion photographer in Hollywood. He photographed female starlets, posing them with animals. Rosen discovered this fact months after taking similar photographs herself.

Photo series

Exhibitions

Awards and features