ABOUT

Ava Ciosek is a photographer, birth worker and anarchist born and based in New York City. Their photographic work constructs  memories, studying the practice of place-based remembrance. Ciosek grew up in SoHo, Chinatown and the Lower East Side during gentrification in the early 2000s; their photos are a mode of processing kinship with disappearing structures of life. They create incongruent, unmoored portraits of fleeting moments—before, in the heat or in the wake of grieving for your city.  Beyond a documentary project, Ciosek interrogates what signifiers in the cityscape make it a collective home. Ultimately, this work asks: what if nostalgia had a living sibling? 

Ava Ciosek

b. 1999, New York City

NYC based

Education:

2021 Occidental College, BFA

Collections:

International Center of Photography, New York, NY

Group Exhibitions:

2026—NotYetArt, Feel Before Meaning, Brooklyn, NY

2025—Not For Sale, Group Exhibition, New York, NY

2023—Boomer Gallery, The New Artist, London, UK

2021 & 2023—Static Arts Collective 2021, Group Show, New York, NY

2018—School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA), Spring Photo Show, Boston, MA