Margo Newmark Rosenbaum is a photographer and painter. “Drawing With Light” is an essential sampler of her vision as a photographic artist—a sort of one-person exhibition of an artist who has spent a lifetime exploring the visible world in her own distinctive way.

Born and educated in California, her early training with Bay Area Figurative Painters Richard Diebenkorn and Elmer Bischoff gave her a keen sense of composition. Later her study with photographer Bud Lee encouraged her sympathetic and sometimes quirky responsiveness to humanity. The selections included here, rather than being arranged in any thematic order, are sequenced in a much more emotional or, perhaps, an intuitive way. Most of the images are black and white, but color photos appear where they seemed to belong. There are pictures of family, friends, landscapes, animals, musicians, artists, and more. Many of her photographs over the years came from collaborative work with her husband, artist and folklorist Art Rosenbaum, documenting traditional music: mountain fiddlers, country blues men and women, Scottish ballad singers. Margo's travels and years in art circles have offered subjects for her sympathetic and keen eye: we see New York subway riders and Egyptian Coptic kids along with folk musicians Elizabeth Cotten, Pete Seeger, Doc and Lucy Barnes, and famous artists and writers like Willem de Kooning, Alice Neel, and James Baldwin.

The book includes a perceptive introduction by photographer, folklorist, and curator Fred Fussell.

In the words of artist Judith McWillie: “This is a gorgeous and remarkable book; the images span over fifty years yet the eye behind them remains constant; the juxtapositions are revelatory and unpredictable. Margo has given us a feast of wise beauty and luminous humanity.”

Margo Newmark Rosenbaum lives and works in Athens, Georgia.