©Jo Ann Chaus, Book Cover from Unspoken, published by Kehrer Verlag

I’m not not exactly sure of the year when I first was introduced to Jo Ann Chaus and her amazing photographs, but it was in San Diego at the Medium Photo Festival. I was immediately wowed by her work and over the years I have nudged her towards a book. Needless to say, I am so thrilled that she has released a gorgeus new monograph, UNSPOKEN, published by Kehrer Verlag.

For more than a decade, UNSPOKEN has given Chaus a way to look at the roles women are handed, inherit, perform, and sometimes carry long after they have decided to live differently. The photographs are populated by women who seem to have stepped out of another era that are carefully dressed, posed, and surrounded by the familiar objects of domestic life. But there is something slightly off. These women are not simply being remembered or reenacted. They are being examined.

Building on her earlier series Conversations with Myself, the artist uses her own body as both subject and character, moving through a collection of personas that feel at once recognizable and strangely personal. Vintage clothing, household objects, gestures, and small details become clues to a complicated inheritance. There is humor in the performance, but also tenderness, discomfort, and the realization that the expectations placed on one generation of women can quietly find their way into the next. Rather than offering a straightforward critique of the past, UNSPOKEN leaves room for the contradictions between who we were expected to be, who we became, and the parts of those earlier versions that may still linger.

A conversation with the artist follows.

©Jo Ann Chaus, from Unspoken, published by Kehrer Verlag

Over more than a decade, UNSPOKEN, an extension of Conversations with Myself, evolved from private exchanges between the camera and me, into a profound visual investigation of identity. In this series, I embody a range of female stereotypes and archetypes—figures shaped by the burden of inherited expectations and internalized roles.

Although I was a modern, independent professional I recognized how deeply I was still bound to my mother’s generation—guided by the ideals of the devoted wife and self-sacrificing mother. Creating these images became an act of excavation, revealing the tension between who I was expected to be, who I was and who I wanted to be.

At first glance, the characters appear rooted in mid-twentieth-century domesticity. Yet beneath the polished façade, the personas radiate defiance and vulnerability, signaling my quiet rebellion. Many of the vintage dresses and objects hold personal meaning, allowing me to layer memory and history, merging my private narrative with a collective cultural archive.

UNSPOKEN is a journey of self-reclamation—a declaration of agency and a record of transformation. The project stands as a testament to my persistence, passion, and the power of art to illuminate and liberate. – Jo Ann Chaus

©Jo Ann Chaus, Black Bow from Unspoken, published by Kehrer Verlag

Jo Ann Chaus is an American artist based in the New York metro area whose work explores the emotional and psychological experience of being a woman in contemporary society. Her images examine the tension between inherited expectations and the desire for self-determination — rendered through dramatic color and the intimate currency of everyday life.
Her practice is rooted in self-inquiry and intergenerational inheritance, documenting a process of being, growing, and becoming. She is known for two bodies of work: Sweetie & Hansom (2008–2015), self-published in 2015, and Conversations, forthcoming in 2026 as Unspoken.
Before turning to fine art photography, Chaus built a first career as a women’s fashion retail entrepreneur (1978–1996) — an experience that deeply informed her eye for color and her engagement with women’s identity. She holds a BS from Boston University, two Certificates of Study from the International Center of Photography in New York City, and has completed advanced workshop studies at Maine Media College.

Instagram: @joann_chaus

©Jo Ann Chaus, Clouds from Unspoken, published by Kehrer Verlag

You describe UNSPOKEN as an extension of Conversations with Myself. What changed for you between the two projects, and what made you want to continue this conversation for more than a decade?  

Conversations with Myself is the thread that runs through all of my work.  There would have been many ways to present the work in book form; I/we chose these images to reflect the arc of “this”particular story/edit.

The work began in my studio when I decided  to photograph the things I felt I would have to leave behind as we prepared to move from our home–and the life we had there.  The conversations began when I stepped in front of the camera, draped in ephemera of the past. Looking into the lens, it was as if I was seeing myself for the first time. They were moments of acknowledgement– that I was separate and apart from everyone else in my life. This was revelatory:  I began to step out of the shadows and honor myself, as a person with something to say, which I said in images.

At a certain point, I was unable to don the vintage costumes to perform as that mid-century woman; I had emerged from the hold those dictates had on me.  I realized a profound sense of freedom–I was claiming my agency.  UNSPOKEN became a collection of images that reflects my metamorphosis from a  feeling of  powerlessness to empowerment.

It took a long time to peel back the layers of what I had absorbed and adopted as a way of being, that was dissonant with how I wanted to be.  It took great effort and courage to “go against” and emerge as a person authentically myself.

Conversations is the bucket that holds all the images that speaking to personal identity and a broader existential point of view. I work fast, but I am a slow learner

©Jo Ann Chaus, Daisy’s Grill from Unspoken, published by Kehrer Verlag

What happens when you physically step into a role that you may have consciously rejected but still recognize as familiar?

It is transformational and freeing to step into a role as a character. Much of this work was driven by location, costume, and a deep search to understand myself — and to understand how the women of that era actually lived: what was embedded in them through The Depression, World War II, the 1950s and 1960s, and particularly in my mother, as a young woman. The work helped me understand my own inner conflicts and tensions.

In each session, I embodied a woman like my mother — a woman with so few freedoms to pursue a life outside the home. It must have been frustrating and enraging. I felt anger and sorrow for them, and anger and sorrow for what I had inherited — the unspoken rules, the silent expectations, the quiet surrenders I had absorbed without being asked. This work was how I exorcized them from my body and mind.

©Jo Ann Chaus, Deer from Unspoken, published by Kehrer Verlag

The photographs reflect mid-century domesticity with vintage clothing, interiors, objects, and carefully constructed poses but there is often something defiant beneath the surface. Are you showing us your inner thoughts in these photographs?

Defiance is exactly the right word; it’s as if in each image the character is outwardly obeying but inwardly plotting her escape, knowing deep down, that she knows better. 

The freedom to express myself in the making stages allowed me, unbeknownst to me at the time, to express myself unencumbered.  It was the accumulation of the work itself, image by image, session by session, that empowered me little by little, over time. I didn’t fully understand what was happening until I looked back and saw how far I had come.

©Jo Ann Chaus, Footprint from Unspoken, published by Kehrer Verlag

Much of the clothing has personal significance. Do they connect you to specific memories, or do they also begin to take on new meanings once used in the project?

Initially the clothing and objects served as a connection to the women they belonged to — that they wore these things against their skin, that they loved them, gave me profound insight into who they were during a time I did not know them.

Working with them — on set and in post production— deepened that connection in ways I didn’t anticipate. I felt bound not only to the specific women in my life, but to women of that era more broadly, and ultimately to the thread that connects us all across time.

©Jo Ann Chaus, Idaho from Unspoken, published by Kehrer Verlag

There is a strong element of performance in UNSPOKEN. How do you think about the relationship between performing a character and revealing something deeply personal about yourself?

Deeply felt considerations present themselves more naturally in performance mode — where one can exaggerate, inhabit archetypes, and even lean into caricature. The distance of fiction creates a kind of permission. It is more powerful to express a truth in metaphor.

Each image is rooted in genuine emotional and psychological exploration. By stepping into a character, I could imagine and fully embody her every gesture.

I think of my still life and landscape images as metaphorical self-portraits as well. I anthropomorphize the objects and spaces I photograph — I empathize with them, feel their histories, and find myself in conversation with what they have witnessed and absorbed over time. In that sense, everything I make is a self-portrait, whether I am in the frame or not.

©Jo Ann Chaus, Kitchen Sink from Unspoken, published by Kehrer Verlag

Can you explain the title? What is left unspoken?

Unspoken is an extension of Conversations with Myself — which is the title of the larger body of work from which this monograph emerges.

Where Conversations with Myself reflects the internal dialogue, Unspoken reaches further. It refers to the conversations that are suppressed, buried, or simply beyond language: the personal, the relational, the social, the political. The things we sense and feel long before we have the words to say them out loud.·

©Jo Ann Chaus, Outside In from Unspoken, published by Kehrer Verlag

You describe the project as an act of self-reclamation. Can you share more about that?

Over the years of making this work, my sense of inner empowerment grew — slowly reclaiming an agency I had never fully possessed, constrained as I was by my basic personality, my childhood home, and the weight of embedded expectations of who I was supposed to be as a wife and a mother.

I began to trust and honor myself, and to summon the courage to own my instincts and sense of self — even when they diverged from who I had been in the past.

It was a gradual awakening, image by image, year by year. I was no longer the same woman who had first stepped in front of that camera. I had become a truer version of myself.

©Jo Ann Chaus, Slip from Unspoken, published by Kehrer Verlag

Does seeing it all come together in book form mean you are on to new work?

Yes. Much of my work is light-driven — where light is almost another character — and without a clear next project I have been documenting the world around me as I move through it.

In a very recent residency workshop with an ICP mentor, I discovered an unexpected new direction: a different kind of self-portrait project, photographing memories and character studies — little short stories brought to life through images, poignant text, and dissolves in Keynote. I made one about my grandmother, Sophie Diamond, and one about my mother, Beatrice Lillian, and I am currently working on one about myself. They have a sense of humor, which is a lovely thing after being so serious for so long. They feel like a good palette cleanser.

At a certain point I found I was no longer able to make the costumed, performative work referencing the 1950s — because I had answered those questions. The work had done what it needed to do.

©Jo Ann Chaus, Stone Wall from Unspoken, published by Kehrer Verlag

Who or what inspires you?

Exploring a new place is always scintillating — even a simple local discovery can spark something unexpected. Working from a prompt can fire up my imagination that have led to some of my best characters and images.

I am deeply inspired by film and television that centers human relationships — the nuance, the tension, the unspoken dynamics between people. Recently I’ve been moved by The History of Sound, Daisies, Silent Friend, and Hacks — and Mad Men, always Mad Men. I am perpetually open to suggestions.

And not surprisingly — fashion advertising. At its best, a fashion image is a compressed world: a mood, a character, a story told in a single frame. That has always spoken directly to the way I think about making photographs.

©Jo Ann Chaus, The Swimmer from Unspoken, published by Kehrer Verlag

©Jo Ann Chaus, Yellow Coat  from Unspoken, published by Kehrer Verlag

©Jo Ann Chaus, Yellow Bird from Unspoken, published by Kehrer Verlag

©Jo Ann Chaus, Zoe from Unspoken, published by Kehrer Verlag

©Jo Ann Chaus, White Sheets from Unspoken, published by Kehrer Verlag

HOW TO ORDER THE BOOK

Customers in North America can order:
FROM JO ANN’S WEBSITE-
SIGNED COPIES AVAILABLE FOR SHIPPING END OF OCTOBER,
AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER
JAC URL:
https://www.joannchaus.com/unspoken-book

EUROPE/ASIA/KV URL:
https://www.kehrerverlag.com/en/Jo-Ann-Chaus/978-3-96900-235-3

AMAZON/USA AVAILABLE AFTER DEC 8 2026