about
B. Proud. It's not a slogan. It's the name that's on her birth certificate, and Barbara Proud says that it's a name she must live up to. As both a commercial and fine art photographer, B. Proud has exhibited her work in solo and group shows around the globe. She was an Adjunct Professor at the University of the Arts for 25 years and now teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art ( MICA) and faculty at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York.
Over the past several years, B. Proud's personal work has predominantly engaged with the myriad injustices faced by the LGBTQ+ community. First Comes Love" is a traveling exhibition of photographs, stories, and videos of couples in long-term relationships. When the mainstream publishers refused to take on the project, Barbara forged ahead and self-published the coffee table book "First Comes Love: Portraits of Enduring LGBTQ Relationships," with a foreword by icon Edie Windsor. A compilation of stunning black & white portraits and stories of 65 couples, the book has received two gold medal awards. "First Comes Love" has been exhibited in New York City, Philadelphia, Delaware, Washington state, Washington, DC, Seattle, Minneapolis, Florida, Berlin, Germany, and Athens, Greece. Her short film, "A Circle of Diamonds," produced with Philly locals Michael Biello and Dan Martin about Edie Windsor's diamond engagement pin, has been included in over 20 film festivals worldwide.
The sequel project, "Transcending Love" is a current work in progress and is focused on transgender and
gender non-conforming couples across the country in attempt to open hearts and minds to a community deserving of understanding, respect, and basic human rights. This work represents the greatest amount of ethnic, geographic, socio-economic, and age diversity in this project in order to show a country that is increasingly becoming divided that transgender and gender non-conforming couples are everyone's neighbors. She has photographed over 70 couples and families in 25 states.
Proud has received grants from the B.W. Bastian Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, the University of the Arts, and the Delaware State Arts Council. Her work is included in the Weeks Gallery in Jamestown, New York, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, the Delaware Art Museum, Eastman Kodak, Haverford College, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Biggs Museum of American Art, and private collections.
