William Paterson University Professor Robin Schwartz Honored with 2016 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for Distinguished Accomplishment in Photography

--Schwartz is among 178 prominent scholars selected from throughout the United States and Canada

Robin Schwartz

Award-winning photographer Robin Schwartz, associate professor of art at William Paterson University, whose photographs were recently featured in the New York Times Magazine, was honored with a 2016 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for her distinguished achievements as a photographer.

Schwartz was one of 178 recipients chosen from nearly 3,000 applicants in the United States and Canada for the fellowships. “These artists and writers, scholars and scientists, represent the best of the best,” says Edward Hirsh, president of the Guggenheim Foundation in a statement.

“Professor Robin Schwartz is one of the College of the Arts and Communication’s very best examples of ‘artist pedagogue’ as she continually creates visual dialogues between the work she produces and the viewing public as a photographer committed to the visual arts journey,” says Daryl Moore, dean of the College of the Arts and Communication at William Paterson. “That she has been selected as one of the few Guggenheim Fellows this year validates the path she continues to traverse — as well as redefine, as a visual artist of merit and relevance.”

Schwartz, who teaches photography at the University, has explored human and animal relationships in much of her work for the last 30 years, such as her “Amelia and the Animals” series of photographs featuring her daughter, Amelia. Starting in the 1980s, she had photographed primates, and since 1992 she has been photographing the indigenous Huichol Community and their artisans in Mexico.

Her photography was seen in the New York Times Magazine on Sunday, April 3, 2016 in a three-page feature by Schwartz about a tiny island in the Bahamas inhabited by pigs. In addition to the New York Times, Schwartz’s photographs have been published in Time Lightbox, The New Yorker, and O, the Oprah Magazine. Schwartz created and edited a National Geographic Magazine Your Shot assignment: “The Animals We Love,” and based on this assignment wrote a chapter in the National Geographic book, Getting Your Shot. 

Schwartz’s photographs are held in several museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Museum and Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris, France.

Schwartz’s fourth monograph, Amelia and the Animals published by Aperture, was cited by Time Lightbox as one of the Best Fall Books of 2014. Her earlier books include Amelia’s World, 2008, Aperture; LIKE US: Primate Portraits, 1993, W.W. Norton & Co.; and Dog Watching, 1995, Takarajima Books.

Schwartz earned a master of fine arts in photography from Pratt Institute in 1981 and a bachelor of arts degree from William Paterson University in 1979.