On going project - click above to see more
Monica Rooney is a fine art photographer specializing in children’s portraiture. She lives and works in Toronto, Ontario. Her work focuses mainly on artistic portraits of her four children. While her work is primarily digital, she also makes unique prints - cyanotypes, alcohol transfers, and emulsion lifts - on watercolour paper, glass, and a mix of the two.
Monica’s work was part of the Just Portraits exhibit at Gallery 1313 in August 2024. She has also shown her photography at the Pingyao International Photography Festival in Pingyao, China in 2023 and 2024. Her exhibit We Remain was part of the Contact Photography Festival 2025.
Monica attended both Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) and George Brown College for photography. She is also a member of The Photography Workshop, run by Rob Davidson, where she explores different techniques and genres.
In the meantime, help us ask the Canadian Government for protections for vulnerable people in the United States and transgender youth in Alberta
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On going project - click above to see more
From Contact Photography Festival 2025 - click above to see more
I started this photography project to explore my thoughts and feelings about raising my two transgender children. I use portraits of them merged with text on what it means to be trans, the obstacles trans children face, and expressions of disinformation spread by people who would rather that these children, my children, did not exist. I hope to show the viewer how jarring it is that people, some with direct influence on our lives, are indifferent to the pain and suffering we must endure. Even worse, that people see our family as a convenient scapegoat to win political power by any means necessary. They want to punish literal children for the crime of existing.
The working title of the project is drawn from an essay by Gwen Smith in the Philadelphia Gay News published July 22, 2024 entitled We Remain - “No matter what, they cannot truly stop people from being transgender or nonbinary. We have faced decades of hardship. We faced centuries before that, too — and yet, we remain. … We cannot deny who we are, and no amount of hardship piled up on us can stop a trans soul from existing. We cannot all be extinguished, and we shall always live on.”
I use existing and new portraits of my children to make cyanotypes, alcohol transfers, and emulsion lifts, adding text embedded in the print or added on top. The work and time I put into these singular pieces mirrors the glacial pace of progress on transgender rights. Things might be discouraging right now but we are not going back. We remain.