Rose Bishop

Rose Bishop is a fourth year PhD candidate in the Department of Art History at the University of Southern California and an enrollee in the Visual Studies Graduate Certificate. She received her master’s degree in Art History and Curatorial Studies from Hunter College in 2021. Her dissertation, Idol Makers, Picture Takers: The Photography of Pop Music, 1956-1981, examines the rise of professional music photography in relation to the documentary practices of fans, “groupies,” and musicans themselves. Bishop is also a 2022-24 National Endowment for the Humanities Graduate Fellow with the VSRI’s Images Out of Time seminar, an interdisciplinary workshop that considers how images travel through time, dropping in and out of linear histories and reshaping perception, institutions, and social practices along the way.  

Her article, “‘The Whole Show on One Photograph’:  Gordon Anderson and the Making of a Star at Harlem’s Apollo Theater,” was published in the Spring 2023 issue of Transbordeur and represents the first in-depth exploration of the photographer’s prolific career as a concert documentarian. She was interviewed about Anderson’s photography practice in LiveWire from The Apollo Archives, produced by the Apollo Theater. Bishop has also contributed writing for 125^th Street: Photography in Harlem (Hirmer Publishers with Hunter East Harlem Gallery, 2022) and What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, 1843–1999 (10×10 Photobooks, 2021), which received the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation Catalogue of the Year Award in 2021.  

Prior to her academic career, she worked as an archivist at the Richard Avedon Foundation. 

• BA Kenyon College, 5/2017
• MA Cuny Hunter College