Ann Fessler is an artist and non-fiction author with a wide-ranging practice that includes photography, film, audio and video installations, and artist’s books.
She has spent nearly four decades creating work that addresses the gap between official histories and lived histories by bringing the untold stories of ordinary people into the public sphere where they can contribute to a more expansive and inclusive understanding of history. The majority of her writing and visual works over the last forty years has addressed feminist issues and themes of family and adoption. She turned to the subject of adoption after being approached by a woman who thought Fessler might be the daughter she had surrendered forty years earlier. Though the woman was not her mother, Fessler, an adoptee, was profoundly moved by the experience. The conversation that ensued shifted the focus of her work.
She subsequently created several large-scale audio and video installations, three films, and an oral history project to interview women who surrendered children during between 1945 and 1973 when and unprecedented 1.5 million women lost babies to adoption due to the social pressures of the time. Between 2002 and 2005 Fessler conducted in-person interviews with over 100 women. With the support of a year-long Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard, she researched the history of adoption and the social climate of the time. The result was her highly acclaimed non-fiction book, The Girls Who Went Away (Penguin Press, 2006) which was called “wrenching, riveting” by The Chicago Tribune, “a remarkably well researched and accomplished book” by The New York Times, and “a blend of deeply moving personal tales, bolstered by solid sociological analysis—journalism of the first order” by The San Francisco Chronicle. It was chosen as one of the top five non-fiction books of the year by the National Book Critics Circle, and was the recipient of the Ballard Book Prize. In 2011, Ms. magazine readers chose her book as one of the top 100 Feminist Books of all time.
Fessler’s documentary films include A Girl Like Her (2011, Women Make Movies, NY), which combines the voices of the mothers she interviewed with footage from the era—including educational films about dating, sex, and “illegitimate” pregnancy, and scripted newsreels about adoption—that both reflected and shaped the public’s understanding of single pregnancy and surrender. Fessler’s film has been subtitled in five languages and shown at colleges, conferences, and film festivals in the UK, Sweden, Poland, Israel, Korea, Holland, Spain, Canada, and the United States. In 2012, Geneva Anderson writing for Art Hound said, “Fessler’s documentary offers a sociologically rich and important deconstruction of a devastating double standard in effect in those days. By revealing the painful legacy that permanently impacted so many mothers, Fessler has finally and respectfully given them a voice.”
Fessler has published eight artist’s books, ranging from inexpensive offset multiples to one-of-a-kind book objects. They include books published by Visual Studies Workshop, Nexus Press, Tyler Offset Press, and a collaborative publication with the National Museum of American Art. All of her artist’s books make reference to existing book forms, primarily those that are intended to educate, including manuals, textbooks, and reference books. Her artist’s books are in the collections of over 100 universities and major museums in the US and abroad, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum in NY, the Tate, and Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Her latest book is a limited-edition artist’s book/memoir about her adoptive father called The Things He Gave Me and The Things I Took (2025). Produced in an edition of 9, each book is housed in a unique clamshell box designed to hold one of her father’s treasured possessions, passed on to Ann for safekeeping.
Fessler has been the recipient of residencies from the Banff Centre for the Arts, Alberta, Canada; the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio; Nexus Press, Atlanta; and Visual Studies Workshop Press, Rochester. She has received numerous grants and fellowships including a Radcliffe Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard; film production grants from the LEF Foundation and the Rhode Island Foundation; visual arts grants from Art Matters, New York; The National Endowment for the Arts; and multiple grants from the Maryland and Rhode Island State Arts Councils. She has been honored for her original research on mothers who lost children for adoption by St. John’s University, where she was awarded the 2014 Adoptee Trailblazer Award, given annually to an adoptee whose work inspires and is foundational for professionals in adoption and foster care work.
Ann is Professor Emerita at Rhode Island School of Design where she taught for 24 years and served as both the Head of the Photography Department and the Director of the Graduate Program in Photography.
Instagram: @annfessler_artist