Ann Fessler, 2007 Award Recipient
We are proud to announce 1982 UA Photography Program MFA Graduate Ann Fessler as the 2007 recipient of the Harold Jones Distinguished Alumni Award.
Ann is Professor of Photography at Rhode Island School of Design where she has served as Head of the Photography Department and Coordinator of the Graduate program. She is an educator, arts administrator, photographer, filmmaker, installation artist, and publisher of several artist books. Her photographs, installations and films have been exhibited in major museums, galleries and film festivals in this country and abroad, including the DeCordova Museum, the Walters Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the California Museum of Photography. Festival screenings include the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Taos Talking Picture Festival, and Women in the Directors Chair International Film Festival.
Her non-fiction book, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade was published by Penguin Press in 2006. Based on research completed under a Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University in 2003-04, the book has been praised by critics in major newspapers and magazines across the country, and is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is currently working on a documentary film that explores the intersection of public images and private experiences of women who surrendered their children for adoption.