Robin Schwartz is a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow in photography with photographs in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Art; The Brooklyn Museum and the Bibliothéque Nationale, France, National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, England; and The Museum Folkwang, Germany, among others.
Robin was short-listed finalist at the Hyeres Festival de Photographie 2010, France; a two-time recipient of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Grant; and a Ford Foundation Individual Artist Grant as a graduate student at Pratt Institute.
Robin’s fourth monograph is Amelia and the Animals published by Aperture, sited by Time LIGHTBOX as one of the Best Fall Books of 2014. Earlier books are Amelia’s World, 2008 Aperture; LIKE US: Primate Portraits, 1993 W.W. Norton & Co.; and Dog Watching, 1995, Takarajima Books. Robin’s photographs have been published in the New York Times Magazine, Time Magazine LIGHTBOX, The New Yorker, Oprah, NPR, Fader, Slate, Stern, Telegraph UK, Guardian UK, Hyperallergic and Musée Magazines. Brooklyn Museum; Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris, France;
Schwartz has presented Master Talks at the National Geographic Magazine Seminar, LOOK3: The Festival of the Photograph, The Eddie Adams Workshop, the Aperture Foundation, FotoDC Week, FOTOfusion and The Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk VA, among others.
Selected features in books: Photography Speaks: 150 Photographers on their Art, Aperture, and The Chrysler Museum, 1995 and 2004 and IMAGINARIUM: The Process Behind the Pictures, by Claire Rosen, 2017. Schwartz created and edited National Geographic Magazine’s Your Shot assignment: “The Animals We Love,” and based on this assignment wrote a chapter in the National Geographic book, Getting Your Shot, 2015.
Schwartz is a professor in photography at William Paterson University of New Jersey and has taught at The International Center for Photography, New York City.
“Photographing animals and the people that are devoted to animals is what I have always cared about and the driving force in all my work. Photography and animals are my passport to each other. I see animals as my spiritual connection; my religion; my vice; my addiction. Animals calm me; comfort me - they save me.“
Robin Schwartz