Maria V. Garth is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. She studies modern and contemporary art with a specialization in Eastern European, Russian, and Soviet art and visual culture and the history and theory of photography. Advised by Jane A. Sharp, her dissertation, “Camera Communism: Women Photographers, Avant-Garde Art, and Documentary Aesthetics in the Soviet Union,” addresses the legacy of women photographers in the Soviet Union between the 1920s and 1980s. As a Dodge Avenir Fellow at the Zimmerli Art Museum, she works in the Department of Russian and Soviet Nonconformist Art researching the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union. At the Zimmerli, Maria recently curated the exhibition Communism Through the Lens: Everyday Life Captured by Women Photographers in the Dodge Collection (2021), which can be viewed online as a virtual presentation. At Rutgers, Maria is a collaborator in The Developing Room, an academic working group that promotes interdisciplinary dialogue on photography’s history, theory, and practice. Maria earned an M.A. in Art History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and holds a B.F.A. in Visual Art: Photography from Boise State University. Her articles have appeared in SEQUITUR (2019) and The Journal of Avant-Garde Studies (2022). Additional new publications are forthcoming.
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