Born, raised and currently based in Los Angeles, Marissa Roth is an internationally published freelance photojournalist and documentary photographer. She has worked on assignment for various prestigious publications including The New York Times, and has covered riots, earthquakes and a coup attempt in the Philippines as well as the first post-communist elections in Hungary. She is passionate about the news stories she covers which include the Kosovar Albanian refugees in Albania, Afghan refugee women in Pakistan, and the homeless in Japan. Roth was part of The Los Angeles Times photography staff that won a Pulitzer Prize for Best Spot News Coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. Feature stories are her hallmark and range from the Richard Serra installation at MOCA, to the Cannes Film Festival.
Roth’s first 10-year solo book project was "Burning Heart, A Portrait of the Philippines", published in 1999. Marissa teaches at various academic institutions including her alma mater, UCLA. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions and a number of images are in museum, corporate and private collections. In 2000, she completed a documentary photography project commissioned by the Los Angeles Public Library, entitled “Inside/Out: Downtown Los Angeles”, that illuminated the cultural and ethnic diversity of downtown Los Angeles that culminated in a book in 2001. “Come the Morning”, a children’s book, is illustrated with 20 of Roth’s photographs of homelessness.
Currently, Roth's commissioned portrait project to photograph the Holocaust survivors who volunteer at The Museum of Tolerance/Simon Wiesenthal Center, “Witness to Truth,” is on permanent exhibition at the museum and a book will be published next year. She has recently finished photography for “One Person Crying: Women and War”, a 25-year global photo essay that addresses the lingering impact of war on women in different cultures around the world, which is currently in production towards a book. Another book, "Infinite Light: A Photographic Meditation on Tibet", was published in 2014 and is available in two limited edition versions. Visit the book's website for more information.
Marissa Roth is based in Los Angeles.
