Fruma has always been fascinated by what her childhood self called “the olden days.” Spellbound by faded sepia portraits of family members she had never met, and hearing her parents’ stories about escaping pogroms and poverty, she acquired an acute sensitivity to human suffering, alongside a deep awareness of the way time works to both elucidate and obscure human experience. Photography, as a so-called “time-based art” became the perfect medium for her to create her own visual interpretation of time. Her father put a Kodak Brownie camera in her hands when she was seven, and she was hooked forever.

 

Today, her photography practice focuses on historical, experimental and hand-made processes, with an emphasis on cyanotype, collage and lumen works. Family life, womanhood, cultural history, and urban and natural environments are where she most often draws inspiration for making images.

 

Fruma is a member of several artist organizations locally in CT where she lives and regularly shows her work, including Silvermine Guild of Artists, the Artists Collective of Westport, The Kerschner Gallery, The Bendheim Gallery, Carriage Barn Art Center, Ridgefield Guild of Artists, Shoreline Arts Alliance and Rowayton Arts Center. She has taught photography to women in crisis at the Project Return home in Westport, and is the recipient of several grants through the Drew Friedman fund. She participated in her first Artist Residency at the Weir Farm Historic Nature Preserve in Wilton, CT, in September, 2022.

 

Her work has also been shown nationally at the SoHo Photo Gallery in NYC, the New York Center for Photographic Arts, the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Southeast Center for Photography, Light ArtSpace Gallery, RI Center of Photographic Art, Vermont Center of Photography, and The Halide Project. She has been published in Issues #33 and 35 of The Hand Magazine, and self-published a book of her documentary travel photographs, "Synagogues Along the Danube," in 2019.

 

Fruma was a member of the first graduating class to earn a BFA in photography at the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design in Jerusalem, Israel, and worked as a commercial photographer and photography teacher for five years in Tel Aviv where she participated in her first group shows. She returned to the U.S. to pursue a Master’s degree in Interactive Technology at NYU, which led to a great day job for 25+ years in digital marketing. Additional recent studies at ICP, Harvard Artists Extension, and Maine Media Workshop & College were with Brenton Hamilton, Anne Eder, and Rochelle Boussieres. In July 2022 she was invited by the Experimental FotoFestival in Barcelona, Spain to participate in a round table discussion on Contemporary Cyanotype with Virginia Dal Magro and Annette Golaz.