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Biography

A native of Niagara Falls and a graduate of Cornell University, Ann Rhoney (b. 1953) approaches her work as a photographer with a painter’s sensitivity to color and light. She applies oil paints by hand to her gelatin-silver prints, allowing each piece to transcend the two-dimensional picture plane. The Metropolitan Museum of Art wrote of her photograph Silk Dress Coming (1987), which was featured in its landmark exhibition Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop (2012-13), "Frustrated by the distortions and expressive limitations of commercially produced color film, Rhoney uses oil paint to color her black-and-white photographs in a naturalistic style that allows for great chromatic subtlety yet fastidiously conceals its own artifice."

Rhoney’s work can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY; the American Scandinavian Foundation, New York, NY; the Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo, NY; the Burchfield Penney Art Center, SUNY Buffalo State, Buffalo, NY; the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas Austin; the Collection of Nion McEvoy; the Paul Sack Photographic Trust, San Francisco, CA; and the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France, among other public and private institutions.

In addition to exhibiting her work widely in art galleries and museums across the United States, Rhoney has seen her work featured in campaigns for companies including Apple and the United Colors of Benneton; on the covers of The New York Magazine, Newsweek, Fortune, Life, and Tibor Kalman’s Colors, among other publications; and in articles in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and Vogue.

Selected Exhibitions

2023
ANN RHONEY: OCEAN BLUE, June 27 – August 31, 2023

2022
Light and Color: Photography of Ann Rhoney and Ingar Krauss, Nailya Alexander Gallery, New York, March 1- May 7, 2022

2020
Festival of Lights, Nailya Alexander Gallery, November - December 2020
Texture, Nailya Alexander Gallery, January-December 2020

2019
Color of Light: Fifteen Years of Nailya Alexander Gallery, New York

2018
Ann Rhoney: Life in Color, Nailya Alexander Gallery, New York, NY

2017
Water, Nailya Alexander Gallery, New York

2017
Collected, Pier 24 Photography, San Francisco, CA

2016 
Fiftieth Anniversary of Burchfield Penney, Buffalo, NY

2012-2013  
Faking It: Manipulated Photography before Photoshop, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX

2003  
Angles on Scandinavia, Scandinavia House, New York, NY

1998  
Hope Photographs, The National Arts Club, New York, NY

1991  
Ann Rhoney, Thackrey and Robertson, San Francisco, CA

1986  
A Century of Photographs from the Permanent Collection, Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo, NY

1985  
Summer Places, Daniel Wolf Gallery, New York, NY

1982 
The Taking of Niagara: A History of the Falls in Photography, Niagara University, Buffalo, NY

SELECTED COLLECTIONS 

Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo, NY
American Scandinavian Foundation, New York, NY
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France
Burchfield Penney Art Center, SUNY Buffalo State, Buffalo, NY
George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY
Harry Ransom Center, the University of Texas at Austin
Howard Stein Collection
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Paul Sack Photographic Trust, San Francisco, CA
McEvoy Family Collection