Mariah Robertson is known for pushing the boundaries of darkroom photography and for exploring themes of representation, reproduction and the subversion of tradition in her vibrant camera-less photo works. Her works are made from the basic elements of the traditional darkroom, yet defy the dominant paradigm of photography as a direct observation of life. For Robertson, the concrete tools of photography are a system from which to work with, marking the passage of time, and creating tension between chance and plan.
Mariah Robertson (b. 1975) received her BA from University of California, Berkeley and her MFA from Yale University. She has participated in the exhibitions A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Outside the Lines: Rites of Spring at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston and Process and Abstraction at the Cleveland Museum of Art's Transformer Station. Solo exhibitions include Mariah Robertson at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, UK; Mariah Robertson: Let's Change at Grand Arts, Kansas City and Swope Art Museum, Terre Haute, Indiana. Her work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. Mariah Robertson lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.