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friend. “Pamela is something like another 
daughter to me,
” Roth said. 
“It’s so meaningful, so extraordinary, that 
my family did this for me,
” said Roth, who 
participated in a Q&A following the presen-
tation. 

A NOTEWORTHY CAREER
Gorelick, a New Jersey resident, spent the 
COVID quarantine living with Roth. Their 
proximity spurred the daughter’s interest to 
organize hundreds of exhibit-level photos 
she found languishing in boxes in Roth’s 
apartment. Gorelick decided to make the 
documentary as a labor of love for her 
mother, focusing on Roth’s use of photogra-
phy as an advocacy tool in making women’s 
lives visible. 
 The photographer’s body of work includes 
documenting homeless women in New York 
City, leaders of the U.S. women’s movement, 
such as Ms. magazine co-founder Gloria 

Steinem, and women she met throughout 
the world.
Roth first came to fame with a series of 
images she started taking in the 1970s for 
her book, Shopping Bag Ladies of New York 
City (St. Joan’s Press, 1982). She became 
friends with some of the homeless women 
and tried to help them, such as finding space 
for one woman to stay temporarily in a 
neighborhood flower shop. 
Although “no one was interested when I 
started,
” Roth became an advocate for her 
city to expand its inadequate women’s shel-
ter. She continued using her camera to docu-
ment women seeking justice, such as a photo 
on her website from the 2000s that shows a 
protest against rent hikes in New York.
“The first (homeless) lady I knew was 
seated on my street, in front of an apartment 
building doorway,
” Roth said. “
After I got to 
know her, she moved to a flowerbed ledge 
across the street.
” The woman lived there 

for months “until the community installed a 
spike fence atop the ledge, leaving her with 
no place to sit or sleep, forcing her to move.
” 
Learning that women could be homeless 
— even those who are Jewish — was a reve-
lation for Roth, who admits to having lived 
“such a perfect life” in Detroit. 
She is the youngest of three children, 
including the sisters’ older brother, the late 
Burton Altman, who worked in real estate. 
Their Detroit-born mother, Clara June 
(Rubin) Altman, whom Joan described as 
“ethereal” and “an inventor,
” came up with 
“the first hair curler.
” But her invention, 
the Schoolgirl Curler, didn’t last because it 
required rubber, “which they couldn’t get 
during World War II,
” Roth said. Their den-
tist father, Albert Altman, came to the U.S. 
as a young man from Ukraine. He had a pol-
icy of not charging his low-income patients. 
Roth grew up in her mother’s kosher home, 
with a synagogue-going father. Later in life, 
she became more observant again.
Roth said the teenaged Joan Altman, a 
member of Mumford High School’s Class of 
1960, had no special interests and skipped 
school a lot — “I was always having fun.
” 
She was 20 at the time of her marriage to 
Jac Roth, in her parents’ backyard. They 
moved to New York, where he joined his 
family’s business, and they raised Melanie 
and another daughter, social worker Alison 
Zingale, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and 
in the Hamptons, within driving distance of 
New York. 

RAISING CONSCIOUSNESS
When Roth attended her first women’s con-
sciousness-raising group, she realized she 
wanted to “do something” that would be just 
for herself. She and Jac divorced in 1971, 
because having career ambitions didn’t suit a 
husband holding traditional values. 
After a little dabbling, Roth realized that 
photography, not film or theater, was her 
true calling. Her employment with a com-
mercial photographer in the early 1970s led 
Roth to seeing a Museum of Modern Art 
(MoMa) exhibit that changed her life. It was 
work of the notable American photographer 
Diane Arbus, who died in 1971. Arbus’ 
black-and-white images of unexpected peo-
ple evoked strong emotions in Roth. She 
decided to take a master-class workshop at 
the New School in New York with Arbus’ 
teacher, Austrian-American photographer 
Lisette Model (1901-1983). Model, whose 

JOAN ROTH PHOTOGRAPHY

JOAN ROTH PHOTOGRAPHY

Black Box Gallery presented her 
display, “Jewish Women: A World 
of Tradition and Change,” to 
open the Jerusalem Biennale. 

America’s first 
woman rabbi, 
Sally Priesand, by 
Joan Roth, 2022, 
at the National 
Portrait Gallery 

LEFT: Roth photographed Jewish women in their daily lives, such as this babushka lighting 
Shabbat candles with her granddaughter in Ukraine. RIGHT: Roth became interested in 
helping Ethiopian Jews during their crisis to leave the oppressive country.

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