Anna Rotty
I explore the transformational qualities of light and water. I’m fascinated by rivers as fluid beings, rather than fixed representations, with complicated histories - bodies representing power and agency, but also subject to attempts to control them. Growing up on the Atlantic coast, and later living by Ocean Beach in San Francisco, I spent most of my life getting to know myself with large bodies of water. Now, living in the desert, we carry a lot of anxiety around water. It is scarce, often fleeting and mistreated. I observe, and then reconstruct my photographic prints within the environment, investigating systems, both natural and built, that transfer energy and water from place to place. How We Hold the Sun consists of intimate portraits of the Rio Grande in Albuquerque, often shown as layered moments within a single frame. I search for places where light and shadow come together in the depths or hover on surfaces to illuminate sediment, showing the connection between landscape and body. Now we witness the Rio Grande dry up annually. Seeing this, I spend time at the City’s Wastewater Treatment Plant, getting to know the cycles of water that contribute to the 3rd largest tributary of the river. I invite the river to become a part of her own photographic representation, and hope my images serve as an active experience of landscape, rather than reiterating a passive gaze, as the medium of photography has historically so often portrayed the non-human ecologies of the West.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Anna Rotty
Anna Rotty lives on Tiwa Pueblo land known as Albuquerque where she received her MFA in photography, and currently teaches, at the University of New Mexico. Her work investigates water, light and infrastructure, informing her understanding of orientation and place. Anna’s work has been published by Southwest Contemporary and Lenscratch and she’s published two books with National Monument Press.
In 2024 Anna was a recipient of the Silver Eye Center for Photography Fellowship honorable mention. She has recently exhibited at Chung 24 Gallery in San Francisco, Princeton University, the University of New Mexico Art Museum, and Texas Tech University. Her work is in collections such as The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Library of Congress, and SFMOMA Special Collection. In December Anna received a fellowship to be an artist in residence at MASS MoCA. This summer she will exhibit at Vladem Contemporary Museum in Santa Fe and perform a series of public engagements.
Website: annarotty.com
Instagram: @annarotty
