Gail Rebhan is a Washington, D.C. based photographer and Professor Emerita of Photography at Northern Virginia Community College. She has an M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts and an undergraduate degree from Antioch College.
Integral to her various bodies of work is an interest in time and change. Her works, which often configure photographs and text in series, examine gender, aging, race, ethnicity, and the built environment. The child of immigrants, Rebhan documents the experience of several individual Jews under Hitler’s reign in Europe and their immigration stories. Her Art on the ART bus project commissioned by Arlington County, Virginia tells immigration/assimilation stories crossing generations and ethnic groups. She also creates photo-collages examining the cultural history of specific sites in Washington, D.C. and surrounding communities. Her recent self-portraits examine the taboo subject of female aging.
Rebhan has had works in hundreds of exhibitions including at the Lentos Kunstmuseum (Linz, Austria), Museum Folkwang (Essen, Germany), and Blue Sky Gallery (Portland, Oregon). In conjunction with her first museum retrospective Gail Rebhan, About Time at the American University Museum-Katzen Arts Center in Washington, DC, MACK Books published Gail Rebhan, About Time with running commentaries by Sally Stein. In 2025 the retrospective will travel to the California Museum of Photography at the University of California, Riverside. Rebhan photographs and coordinates exhibitions with the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition.
Video – Voices from the Washington Women’s Arts Center – Gail Rebhan