About
Elizabeth Solaka
In front of the base of the Statue of Liberty circa 1982.
Elizabeth Anne Solaka grew up in Lafayette Park in downtown Detroit. As a little girl, she swam in the rooftop pool on the parking structure between twin Ludwig Mies van der Rohe towers where she lived. She sat at the checkout counter of her father’s immigrant grocery store, swinging her feet and eating King Cones that she grabbed from the freezer. At night, her mom would bring her to their family-owned blues bar, The Soup Kitchen Saloon. One night, she played piano beside blues legend Willie Dixon while the crowd danced on tables. Then she became an artist.
Elizabeth is a fashion and editorial portrait photographer based in New York. She works with medium and large format film, natural light, and darkroom processes. She is drawn to the tonal beauty and intimacy of the slower photographic process and has been consistently working for the last three decades.
Her photography has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New York Times and Elle Magazine and countless publications. Her work has been exhibited in Paris, Boston, San Francisco, Berlin, and New York.
She has worked for years with the Hall Art Foundation, Sotheby’s, Gagosian Gallery, Columbia University, New York University, Smith College, the Myles Group, and the Center for Jewish History. She has lived in Paris, Berlin, Boston, Northern California, Western Massachusetts, and Los Angeles.
Self-portrait