A Fearless Eye

Barbara Ramos is a photographer who was born in New York City and moved to Los Angeles with her family at the age of six. She received a BFA in photography at the San Francisco Art Institute and a master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Creative Arts from San Francisco State in 1973. She photographed avidly in the 1970s but switched careers to start a handcrafted jewelry business and raise a family, packing away her negatives and taking a nearly fifty-year hiatus from the medium. Her work was rediscovered and digitized during the pandemic, gaining acclaim online and in the fine arts space. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, Joe Ramos. Rachel Kushner is the bestselling author of The Mayor of Leipzig, The Mars Room, The Flamethrowers, Telex from Cuba, The Strange Case of Rachel K, and The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020. She lives in Los Angeles. Sally Stein, Professor Emerita, Department of Art History, UC Irvine, is an independent scholar based in Los Angeles who continues to research and write about 20th-century photography in the US and its relation to broader questions of culture and society.  Steven A. Heller is a photographer, educator, and writer who resides in Los Angeles. A contributing writer for over a decade to Black & White, the quarterly fine art photography magazine, Heller has profiled numerous photographers and creative professionals with intimacy and elegance—including writing the first published piece on the life and work of Barbara Ramos.