Rachel Sussman, b. 1975, grew up in Baltimore, punctuated by stints in Santa Fe and Nicoya, Costa Rica. Sussman received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in 1998, attended the Bard MFA program in 2008, and began a practice-based fine arts PhD at Central Saint Martins College of Art in London in 2008 (currently on hold.)
In 2009 Sussman was a nominated artist for the prestigious Prix Pictet, as well as being selected as a finalist for the British Council’s Darwin Now award. In 2008 Sussman was awarded recognition for most outstanding work at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate Forum on Origins. She's had artist residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Cooper Union and Art and the Vermont Studio Center. She currently serves as an officer on the Macdowell Colony Fellows Executive Committee.
Over the past 10 years Sussman has exhibited in US and Europe and her work has been acquired for university, corporate and numerous private collections. Her work was lauded as one of the best photograhy shows of 2008 by Jerry Saltz in New York Magazine, and she was recently profiled on NPR.org's Picture Show.
In addition to her artwork, Sussman has worked as an Interactive Producer for over 10 years and has managed large teams and interdisciplinary projects ranging from NBC.com’s Homicide and Saturday Night Live websites to educational software projects employing speech recognition technologies. She also performed trapeze as part of the duo The Amazing Siblings in venues throughout New York, though her acrobatic career was cut short when she was sidelined by a rotator cuff injury.
Sussman lives in Brooklyn when she is not traveling.
