March 1, 2026
By Maria Mostajo
Pamela Takiff’s artistic practice reveals the complexities of her unique perspective as both a photographer and human rights activist. An attorney, she has lectured publicly—including before the United Nations Human Rights Council—and advocates for victims of sex trafficking and domestic violence. She has seen the dark side of humanity. Yet she is drawn to beauty and light. Takiff uses her iPhone camera to capture an image or moment in time that she transforms into something she says will “focus the viewer’s eye and inspire their imagination without changing what was there to be seen.”
Takiff, who lives in Sharon with husband, has always had an artistic eye, and was drawn to photography from a young age. Her mother and brother are both sculptors; and her mother paints, and makes jewelry. Takiff has no formal art training, but while in college developed darkroom skills. Later, in New York City, she learned the arts of gilding and decoupage. She is now incorporating these techniques into her photographic work.
As a street photographer, Takiff notices color and shapes in things most of us ignore: deteriorating paper, peeling paint. She hones in, and finds an image within an image. Then, through her editing process, she excavates the context, presenting the viewer with a landscape, form, or structure that allows for the creation of a new narrative.
Takiff is a sensitive and intuitive person. She finds purpose as an advocate for the traumatized, particularly women. She brings that sensibility to her artistic practice. Her newest body of work is partly inspired by the “the silencing of women and the loss of their agency.” Takiff’s females—shown at Le Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris last December, and at Mad Rose Gallery in Millerton last fall, are an assemblage of a powerful gaze, a silhouette revealing physical aplomb and stature, marbleized torsos decorated by Takiff’s tender gilding to accentuate the female shape, or bejewelled armless and faceless mannequins, all hinting to the forms of erasure or the use of the female form as a prop or foil. Takiff’s instinct is to highlight the reductive nature of some imagery while counterbalancing them with a sense of ornamentation that is both dramatic and elegant.
While Takiff does not photograph landscape or nature, she has recently captured reflective blues and grays from dirt or paint splattered indiscriminately on sheet metal at a construction site. She brings forth a palette and light that is painterly, almost abstract, and yet resembles winter scenery or Japanese watercolors of ancient landscapes.
In keeping with her grace, Takiff shifts attention to others as she raves about the Center for Photography at Woodstock, where she now serves on the board. She joined the membership-based organization looking for community and a way to sustain her practice. Takiff credits the recent transformation of her practice with collaboration with a studio assistant. “We work together on every part of the image, what to keep in, what to edit out, how to improve color and clarity.” —pamelatakiff.art
