The Red Purse: A Story of Grief and Desire

Jacque Rupp

Book Details
Hardcover
ISBN-13: 9781954119260
116 pages; 58 Photographs
6 x 9 inches
$50 US

Essays by Jacque Rupp, Elinor Carucci, Jason Langer and Ann Jastrab

Featured in: All About Photo and Lenscratch.

The Red Purse is about love, loss, and rebuilding. Shortly after the death of her husband, Rupp bought a red purse, which became deeply personal to the artist. As a young widow, the red purse represented freedom in an otherwise dark and uncertain time.


Jacque Rupp is a documentary and fine art photographer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. A visual storyteller, Rupp uses the camera to challenge and question, offering a unique perspective on the world around us. In her most recent work, Rupp focuses on womanhood; using herself and her experiences. as the subject matter, Rupp ventures off into the imagined, exploring issues of identity and purpose. Her photographs are held in private collections and have been exhibited widely in juried shows and publications, and was selected as a Critical Mass 2022 and 2023 finalist.

Elinor Carucci’s work has been included in many solo and group exhibitions worldwide and appeared in publications internationally. Her work is in the collections of MoMA, The Jewish Museum, the Brooklyn Museum and many others. She was awarded the ICP Infinity Award in 2001, The Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002 and NYFA in 2010.

Jason Langer’s photography is known for its sense of mystery, eroticism and suspense. His work is rooted in universal mystical ideas, his Jewish upbringing, and Buddhist and Jungian concepts. He has published four monographs distributed worldwide including: Secret City (2006, Nazraeli Press), Possession (2013, Nazraeli Press), a mid-career retrospective Twenty Years (Radius Books, 2015) and Berlin (Kerber Verlag, 2022). Langer has been published in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, American Photographer and countless other publications and exhibits and publishes regularly.

Ann Jastrab serves as Executive Director for The Center for Photographic Art. Jastrab has curated many exhibitions for RayKo during her tenure as gallery director – while also jurying, curating, and organizing numerous exhibitions for other national and international venues outside of the San Francisco Bay Area.