Shelly
Mosman

Shelly Mosman makes photographs that behave like paintings.

She started young, posing her younger sister in front of the family's 1984 Grand Am with a plastic camera. She studied drawing and painting at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, spent about a decade shooting weddings, and in 2011 turned to the work she is known for now: Animal Child, the signature series that pairs children with the creatures they love.

In her studio in the Casket Arts Building in Northeast Minneapolis she builds each portrait as a constructed tableau: a single sitter, vintage clothing borrowed from shops like My Sister's Closet, a hand-painted or tapestry backdrop, controlled light, and often a live animal that belongs to the person in the frame. She allows, in her words, "a certain amount of play time during the shoot." Her subjects rarely smile. The result is solemn and still, closer to a 19th-century portrait than a contemporary photograph.

Critics have called her portraits "casually surreal," carrying "the depth and mystery associated with the Old World Masters." Her photographs have been published across Europe, Australia, South America, and the United States, and acquired by the Plains Art Museum, the Rockford Art Museum, and the Eiteljorg Museum. In 2025 the Minnesota Marine Art Museum presented Currents, a solo exhibition of her water-inspired portraits. Alongside her gallery work she photographs musicians and cultural figures. City Pages named her Artist of the Year in 2014.