The Errand of the Eye: Photographs by Rose Mandel

Following her flight from Europe in 1942, Rose Mandel lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and, for more than two decades, created a rich and original body of photographs. A refined sense of craft and a deeply personal vision placed Mandel in the heart of some of the most vital artistic currents of her time, which still resonate today. Though her photographs have appeared in significant exhibitions and publications and received critical acclaim from contemporaries including Minor White and Ansel Adams, her work as a whole remains largely unknown.
The Errand of the Eye: Photographs by Rose Mandel offers the first full assessment of a dynamic artist who extended the expressive potential of photography during an exceptionally innovative period in Bay Area art. Featuring more than seventy-two intimate landscapes, nature studies, and portraits ranging in style from surreal to abstract, The Errand of the Eye illuminates the full breadth and depth of Mandel’s achievement, and establishes her place in the history of modernist photography.