This poignantly beautiful exhibit of photographs and artist books were made during the three years Wallenstein spent as a hospice volunteer, visiting Anne, a cancer patient, at her apartment in Greenwich Village. Ellen photographed Anne’s windows, bedroom, flower arrangements, and cat, to give the woman views of what she couldn’t see from her bed. As time went on she began to photograph the objects in the apartment as metaphors of the remnants of an interesting life.

Photographs from “Opus for Anne” were featured on the Aperture Foundation’s On-line gallery “Director’s Cut (www.aperture.org). Ellen Harris, former Executive Director of Aperture, referred to the work as “gorgeous, heartfelt, and elegiac”, further stating that “only an artist could extract from these circumstances pictures of such beauty and eloquence without becoming maudlin.”

Selections from this work were also included in “I Bienal de Arte Contemporaneo” sponsored by Fundacion ONCE, at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Spain, December 2005 through February 2006.

Ellen Wallenstein was born in New York City in 1952 and grew up in Washington Heights, and attended public schools. Her first photographs were made while a student at Hunter College High School. Wallenstein earned a BA in Art History from SUNY Stony Brook and an MFA in Photography from Pratt Institute, where she is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Media Arts Department. Prof. Wallenstein is a member of the faculty at the School of Visual Arts (SVA), where she teaches photography and book arts classes.