Melissa Shook (April 18, 1939 – August 27, 2020) was an American documentary photographer, artist and educator. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

in New York, and held in the collection there and at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

in New York and

Moderna Museet Moderna Museet ("the Museum of Modern Art"), Stockholm, Sweden, is a state museum for modern and contemporary art located on the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm, opened in 1958. In 2009, the museum opened a new branch in Malmö in t ...

in Stockholm,

Life and work

Shook was born in New York, New York on April 18, 1939. She studied at

Bard College Bard College is a private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, and is within the Hudson River Historic ...

and the

Art Students League of New York The Art Students League of New York is an art school at 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may stu ...

. Shook taught at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

's Creative Photo Lab in 1974, and at the

University of Massachusetts Boston The University of Massachusetts Boston (stylized as UMass Boston) is a Public university, public research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the only public research university in Boston and the third-largest campus in the five-campus Un ...

from 1975 to 2005. Her subjects included her daughter; a series of daily self-portraits; a shelter for homeless men and women; and a wheelchair basketball team. She died in Chelsea, Massachusetts on August 27, 2020.

Publications

*''Streets are for Nobody: Homeless Women Speak''. Boston: Boston Center for the Arts, 1991. With Jane Peterson. *''My Suffolk Downs''. Pressed Wafer, 2012. . Poetry and photography. *''He Says, She Says, I Say, and Nobody Tells the Truth, Whatever That Is, on the Backside of Suffolk Downs: a narrative by Melissa Shook''. WordTech, 2014. . *''Daily Self-Portraits 1972-1973''. TBW Books, 2023. .

Group exhibitions

*''Recent Acquisitions, 1974–1976'',

, New York, 1976 *''Pictures by Women: a History of Modern Photography'', Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2010/11

Collections

Shook's work is held in the following permanent collections: *

Center for Creative Photography The Center for Creative Photography (CCP), established in 1975 and located on the University of Arizona's Tucson campus, is a research facility and archival repository containing the full archives of over sixty of the most famous American pho ...

, University of Arizona, Arizona: 83 prints (as of June 2016) *

International Center of Photography The International Center of Photography (ICP), at 79 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, consists of a museum for photography and visual culture and a school offering an array of educational courses and programming. ...

, New York: 1 print (as of April 2021) *

Light Work Light Work is a photography center in Syracuse, New York. The artist-run nonprofit supports photographers through a community-access digital lab facility, residencies, exhibitions, and publications. History The organization is housed at Syra ...

, Syracuse, New York: 8 prints (as of April 2021) *

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art museum in Kansas City, Missouri, known for its encyclopedic collection of art from nearly every continent and culture, and especially for its extensive collection of Asian art. In 2007, ''Time'' magaz ...

, Kansas City, MO: 208 prints (as of April 2021) *

, New York: 2 prints (as of April 2021) *

, Stockholm, Sweden *

, New York: 37 prints (as of April 2021)

References

21st-century American photographers 20th-century American photographers American women photographers Photographers from Massachusetts Bard College alumni 2020 deaths 1939 births 21st-century American women artists 20th-century American women {{US-photographer-stub