Rose Hartman was born in Manhattan's East Village. She started patrolling the night scene in 1975 as an arts and society columnist at the SoHo Weekly News. Her first big break was a photo shoot of Joan Hemingway's wedding in Sun Valley, Idaho where she managed to induce Ernest Hemingway's wife, Mary, to pose for her relaxing in a hammock. Her photos have been published in Vogue, Glamour, Vanity Fair, Art & Auction, Art News, Harpers Bazaar, Panorama, Der Spiegel, Elle, and many other magazines. Her first book, Birds of Paradise: An Intimate View of the New York Fashion World (Delacorte Press), remains recognized as much as a collection of photographs, as a history of the era it records.