Marisa Scheinfeld

Marisa Scheinfeld is a Jewish American photographer and author, born in Brooklyn in 1980 and raised in the Catskills of New York. She earned her B.A. from the University at Albany, SUNY, and her MFA from San Diego State University. Her work explores regional landscapes and layered histories—both visible and obscured—using photography as a form of preservation.

Her photographs are held in major collections including the Library of Congress and New York Public Library, and have appeared in publications such as National Geographic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Her book The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America’s Jewish Vacationland was published by Cornell University Press in 2016. In 2022, she co-founded the Borscht Belt Historical Marker Project. She is an Adjunct Professor of Photography at SUNY Purchase.

She is currently at work on her second book, co-written with her sister Jillian Scheinfeld and forthcoming from Cornell University Press, which explores hidden and overlooked histories, vanished communities, utopian experiments, and countercultures in the Catskills and Hudson Valley through a blend of photography, archival research, and narrative.