Ann Fessler is a Professor of Photography at Rhode Island School of Design. A specialist in video and audio installation art, she received her BA in Art from Ohio State University, her MA in Media Studies from Webster University, and her MFA in Photography at the University of Arizona.  Fessler has been called a pioneer in the realm of reproductive justice for her bestselling book, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade, which tells the stories of unmarried women who were coerced in to placing their children for adoption, both by their families and a society that insisted single women could not be good mothers. Her own personal journey to find her birth mother’s hometown stimulated her research into the subject of adoption and shaped her visual exhibitions and writing.

Her photographs, installations, and films have been exhibited in major museums, galleries, and film festivals in the US and abroad, including the DeCordova Museum, the Walters Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the California Museum of Photography.