MELISSA SHOOK | PHOTOGRAPHS

In 2024 TBW books published a monograph devoted to Melissa Shook’s Daily Self-Portraits 1972–1973 and the Nelson Atkins museum presented a solo show of the series. Galérie La Patinoire Royale Bach exhibited Shook's work in dialogue with Ken Ohara in the 2023 exhibition Autoportraits au Quotidien, and at Paris Photo.

Her work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harvard Art Musuems, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and Moderna Museet Stockholm, among other institutions.

Her work, published in Camera 35 Magazine, attracted the attention of MoMA curator John Szarkowski, and he purchased a dozen prints for their collection in 1975. 

She became the first female photography instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1979 she joined the Arts & Art History Department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, to teach photography for 31 years, leaving an indelible mark on generations of students.