Jo Ann Chaus is an American artist based in the New York metropolitan area. Her work explores identity, inherited expectations and the emotional experience of being a woman in contemporary society. Before turning to fine art photography, she worked for eighteen years as a women’s fashion retail entrepreneur, an experience that influenced both her interest in women’s identity and her strong use of colour.
She studied at Boston University. At the International Center of Photography in New York City she completed the Track Program in 2013 and the Advanced Track in 2017, and she continued with workshops at Maine Media. Her work is in the collection of the Center for Creative Photography.
Her book Unspoken (Kehrer Verlag, 2026) gathers 72 colour photographs made over more than ten years for her project Conversations with Myself. In staged self-portraits with vintage dresses, domestic interiors and everyday objects, she plays female stereotypes and archetypes, moving from images of confinement toward independence and confidence. The book has a prologue by the New York gallerist Debra Klomp Ching. Her earlier body of work is Sweetie & Hansom.
