Artist Bio

Mike Rosen was born and grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, graduating from St. Paul Central High School. After earning an undergraduate business degree at the University of Michigan, he obtained an M.B.A. in finance from Columbia University.

For the next forty-plus years, he enjoyed a diversified career in investments and financial planning, including a twelve year span operating his own investment counseling/financial planning firm. In the 1990s, Rosen became interested in investment real estate, a field in which he still am somewhat active. Retirement from full-time business in 2002 allowed him to pursue other activities, including, fortunately, extensive travel. His initial goal was to try his hand at travel writing. Rosen soon discovered that some of the most successful travel writers also take their own photographs, and he felt that would be a great way to rekindle his childhood fascination with photography (he built and practically lived in his own darkroom for several years). Soon he realized that writing was a job for him but creating artistic images was quickly becoming a passion.

Meanwhile, Rosen has been married to the same wonderful lady (Toni) for 46 years, has three interesting and successful children and four grandchildren (with two more on the way). He devotes considerable time and resources to giving back to the community via serving on non-profit boards (Minnesota Humanities Commission and Central Community Housing Trust) and other philanthropic endeavors.

Artist's Statement

As a traveler and photographer, I try to capture the essence and the spirit of places I visit, their people and cultures. My objective is to combine composition, light and color into insightful, evocative, storytelling images, rather than simply sightseeing or travelogue snapshots. I love the process and technology of creating photographic art and the feedback from those who understand and appreciate my work.

In the past few years, I have traveled to Eastern Europe, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, southern Africa, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and India. These exotic locales have provided me many rich opportunities to hone my skills and develop my own style. For example, while I started out thinking that I would concentrate on pure landscape/nature shots, I have evolved into much preferring scenes with a human element in them--they add so much interest to even the most beautiful of landscapes by helping to tell stories (or leave unanswered questions) about the culture of the particular region.

Thus, last spring, I was very excited to learn that my entry into a photo contest run by Lake Superior Magazine won the "cover prize" and was on the cover of the March-April issue. It shows two photographers near Cloquet, MN walking down a dirt road into a thick pine forest at sunrise. Without the hikers, this would have made a very nice landscape shot--postcard material, perhaps--but the inclusion of this human interest factor, which also added a sense of scale to the extraordinarily tall trees, was what made the work, in my opinion, an award winner.

On a recent trip to Eastern Europe, I decided to visit the Auschwitz/Birkenau concentration camp complex near Krakow, Poland. Even though I,d already experienced the heart-wrenching exhibits at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, I felt that as a Jew who undoubtedly has many ancestors that perished in the Holocaust, I wanted to see first-hand the scale and monstrosity of this most notorious of the Nazi death camps. The photos displayed here portray some of the more poignant and meaningful scenes I viewed on that September afternoon. While I took all of them in color, I converted most to monochrome, which seems more in keeping with the somber and tragic subject matter.

These images were captured with a Nikon N80 SLR film camera. While I seem to be one of the few remaining film camera holdouts, I do scan the negatives into my computer, after which I gain all the benefits of digital editing and printing. Other than the 4' x 6' image of the Zyclon-B (hydrogen cyanide) gas canisters, these are all my own prints.

All the exhibited prints are for sale, framed or unframed in any desired size. Approximately one-third of the sale price will be donated to Intermedia Arts (buyers will receive proper notification for income tax purposes). I'm grateful to Intermedia Arts for featuring my work in this unique show with two such accomplished co-artists.

You can see these images plus some of my Southeast Asia, India, Switzerland and northern Minnesota photos at my web site: www.mikerosenphotos.com. I'd be happy to schedule a private showing with anyone interested.