You are now entering the human heart

Ilona Szwarc – born and raised in Warsaw, Szwarc now lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She holds an MFA in Photography from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut and a BFA from School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her work explores ways in which female identity is constructed in current cultural context, as well as processes of socialization of girls and women. Notions of becoming, and concept of the ideal self are at the core of her investigation. The artist’s most famous series are “Rodeo Girls” and “American Girls” – the last one awarded in the World Press Photo competition in 2013.

Szwarc is the author of several individual exhibitions, including: Foley Gallery in New York; Claude Samuel Galerie in Paris, Amerika Haus in Munich and Maison de la Photographie in Lille. Her photographs have been shown at group exhibitions in New York, London, Bilbao, Amsterdam, Łódź, Chicago and recently at Regen Projects in Los Angeles and Danziger Gallery in New York. She has won many prestigious awards, the most important of which are: Richard Benson Prize for Excellence in Photography (Yale University, 2015), Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture (Arnold and August Newman Foundation, 2014), and World Press Photo (World Press Photo Foundation, 2013). In 2014 Szwarc participated in the Joop Swart Masterclass, and Yale University awarded her an Alice Kimball Traveling Fellowship grant. In 2016, she was included in the prestigious group of Talents of the FOAM museum, and the project I am a Woman and I Feast on Memory was presented in Foam Magazine and at the Unseen festival in Amsterdam.

Szwarc’s photographs have been published all over the world, incl. by The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, TIME, The UK Sunday Times Magazine, The Telegraph Magazine.