Eva Rubinstein

Eva Rubinstein is a Polish-American performer and photographer born in 1933 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her birth in that city was circumstantial: her mother, the ballerina Nela Młynarska, had traveled there to accompany her father, the pianist Arthur Rubinstein, during a concert tour of South America. The family subsequently settled in Paris, where Rubinstein began training as a ballet dancer at the age of five. When World War II broke out in 1939, the family relocated to the United States, and Rubinstein became an American citizen in 1946.

Her formal education included studies at Scripps College in Claremont, California, and drama training at the University of California, Los Angeles. Beginning in 1953, she pursued a career as a dancer and actress in New York, appearing on Broadway through 1955. Her stage credits during this period include The Diary of Anne Frank, The Girl in Pink Tights, and Cyrano de Bergerac, with The Diary of Anne Frank representing her participation in that play's original production.

In 1956, Rubinstein married William Sloane Coffin, with whom she had three children: Amy, Alexander, and David. The marriage ended in divorce in 1968. That same decade marked a significant professional transition: in 1967, Rubinstein developed a serious commitment to photography, drawing on workshops with photographers Lisette Model and Diane Arbus. Her photographic work encompasses portraits, nudes, and interior spaces, produced in both the United States and Europe.

Beyond her own practice, Rubinstein taught photography workshops at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan in 1972, at Manhattanville College, and at Purchase, New York, between 1974 and 1975, among numerous other venues across the United States and Europe. Her photographs have been exhibited in nearly a hundred solo shows worldwide, including a 1979 exhibition at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts in Michigan, a 1984 exhibition at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, Poland, a 1985 exhibition at the Galerie du Château d'eau in Toulouse, France, and a 2009 exhibition titled Élégies at the Galerie In Camera in Paris.