Biographical / Historical

Claire Yaffa is a freelance photographer, noted for her social realism. Her photographs portray society's less fortunate -- the homeless, the aging, the handicapped -- and focus especially on the problems of child abuse and neglect. Her work has been exhibited at the Hudson River Museum, the International Center of Photography, Sarah Lawrence College, the White Plains Museum Gallery, the United Nations, and other galleries throughout America.

Yaffa's photographs have been published in The New York Times, The Daily News, Vanity Fair, and Vogue. She has photographed for a variety of medical organizations including the National Foundation for Children with Learning Disabilities, Bronx Lebanon Hospital and Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. She has also published two monographs of her reportage work: Reaching Out (1987) and  A Dying Child is Born: The Story of Tracy (1992).

More recently, Yaffa has changed her focus from photojournalism to more poetic subjects. Her work has been published by Ruder Finn Press in three monographs, described as a series of visual poems: Moments (2004),  Life's Dream (2006), and  Divertissement . . . I Dreamed a Dream (2008).

In addition to taking pictures, Yaffa has served as photography editor of Westchester Magazine and photography coordinator of the United Nations Women's Arts Festival. She has also served on the Board of Directors of ICP's Archival and Acquisition Committee. In 1995, she received the Westchester Arts Council Award.