Roz Joseph (June 30, 1926 – December 25, 2019) was an American photographer. She took black-and-white photographs of New York City and color photographs of the local architecture and drag scene of San Francisco, California.

Photography career

Joseph took photographs during her travels in Europe and North Africa, only to return to New York City, where she specialized in black-and-white images. Shortly after winning the grand prize in a photo competition run by the '' Saturday Review'' in 1963, Joseph returned to Europe. She also won the Purchase Award from the Concord Community Arts Department of the National Photography Competition. Joseph relocated to San Francisco in 1970, where she mainly took color photographs of the local architecture and drag queens. In 1991, she provided all the illustrations for ''Details: The Architect's Art'', an art book by Sally Byrne Woodbridge that analyzes the decorative details of San Francisco buildings from the Victorian period to the 1940s. In the 1970s and 1980s, Joseph's photographs were exhibited at the

San Francisco Art Institute San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a private college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. Approximately ...

, the

UCR/California Museum of Photography The UCR/California Museum of Photography (CMP) is an off-campus institution and department of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of California, Riverside, California, USA. The collections of UCR/CMP form the la ...

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

's Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, the Montalvo Arts Center, the

Coos Art Museum Coos Art Museum is a museum in Coos Bay, operating on the southern coast of the U.S. state of Oregon since 1966. It offers exhibitions, art classes, lectures, and community events. Coos Art Museum is housed in a 1936 Art Deco former U.S. Post Offi ...

in Oregon, and the

Center for Photography at Woodstock The Center for Photography at Woodstock (CPW) is a not-for-profit artist-centered organization to develop and promote contemporary photography, located in Woodstock, New York. It began operations in 1977 under the name ''Catskill Center for Photogr ...

in New York. Joseph's series of images of drag queens produced in 1975–1978 received several exhibitions in the 1970s, then was the subject of a one-artist show, "Reigning Queens: The Lost Photos of Roz Joseph," at the

GLBT Historical Society Museum The GLBT Historical Society (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society) (formerly Gay and Lesbian Historical Society of Northern California; San Francisco Bay Area Gay and Lesbian Historical Society) maintains an extensive collection ...

in San Francisco in 2015–2016. Joseph had donated the photographs, the drafts of an unpublished book on the series and related professional records to the archives of the society in two lots in 2010 and 2016."Roz Joseph Photographs"
finding aid for the collection at the GLBT Historical Society; posted on the Online Archive of California (2020). Retrieved January 24, 2020.

Personal life

Joseph was born in 1926 in the

Bronx, New York The Bronx () is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the U.S. state, state of New York (state), New York. It is south of Westchester County, New York, Westchester County; north and east of the ...

. She graduated from the

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

in 1947 with a bachelor's degree in education and subsequently took art and photography classes there. Joseph married Elliott Joseph in 1948. They resided in Paris, in New York and finally in the

Russian Hill Russian Hill is a Neighborhoods in San Francisco, California, neighborhood of San Francisco, California. It is named after one of List of San Francisco, California Hills, San Francisco's 44 hills, and one of its original "Seven Hills". Location ...

neighborhood of San Francisco, California. Roz Joseph died of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease at her home on December 25, 2019.

Works

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Joseph, Roz 1926 births 2019 deaths People from the Bronx Photographers from San Francisco City College of New York alumni 20th-century American photographers 21st-century American photographers 20th-century American women photographers 21st-century American women photographers