Barbara Beeman: Nature’s Mirror

Barbara Beeman, Bowery Street Lamp, 2020, Digital print.

Barbara Beeman worked as a Supervisor of Social Work for Hudson County Social Services for 40 years and during that time she continued her passion for photography & music. She took her first significant photo at age 8 with the Brownie camera her mother had given her and then pursued her love of photography at Jersey City State College where she also acted as the photography lab assistant. Barbara worked for The Hudson Dispatch where she wrote women’s news stories and did her own photography for the stories. As an underpaid photographer/writer for the Dispatch (The Dispatch paid $76 a week for a full-time reporter/photographer at the time), she decided a career in Social Work would fulfill her passion for helping others and would provide a better means to earning a living.

After retiring from a career in Social Work with specialties in Domestic Violence, Homelessness, and the Elderly, she decided to pursue her career again in photography. Barbara bought her first digital camera and taught herself digital photography with the help of the online courses by Ben Willmore on Creative Live. She also had showings of her work at The Cupping Room Cafe in New York City where Ivan Carp reviewed her work as visually compelling. Her work appeared in a James Vanderzee tribute book on Blurb by the Concord Gallery in Oakland, California.

She won the Marion Anderson members’ award for portraiture in 2018 at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey’s Members Show. She also holds an annual showing of her work of Bayonne photos every year in June at Bayonne City Hall. Barbara is a member of ASMP and had a portfolio entitled Old Glass published in L’Oeildelaphotographie this past June.

Ms. Beeman performs music with her partner Bill Bannon and is currently releasing a cd called Will Things Get Better (Beeman & Bannon Band) which you can find on cd baby.