Filmmaker and Photographer Jean Fruth does more than take pictures.  She tells stories—of vibrant personalities, local cultures, and distinctive communities.  From a small darkroom to the most iconic stadiums flooded with lights, Jean’s trajectory as one of photography’s preeminent visual storytellers has taken her on a round-the-horn tour of the world’s most indelible landmarks.

Now Jean hopes to tell an even larger story: about the power of sports to change the world.  While baseball has always been her most compelling subject, what drives her now is to serve historically underserved communities as the co-founder of Grassroots Baseball, a non-profit that promotes a simple truth: sports isn’t merely a diversion.  Its influence doesn’t end at the chalk line.  Sports can empower and transform lives—the lives of youth, minorities, and women around the globe.

Sports has always given Jean vivid pictures; now it has given her vital purpose.  Her current projects tell the story of the unacknowledged past, the thrilling present, and the bright future of girls and women in baseball.  While shooting photographs for her third book in the Grassroots Baseball series, she directed and produced a documentary that shines an overdue spotlight on premiere women players—“unsung sheroes,” she calls them—from diamonds worldwide.  SEE HER BE HER features a deep roster of powerful women who truly swing for the fences—for their teams, for their countries, and for the sheer love of the game—but most urgently, for future generations of female athletes everywhere, who have struggled too long for their turn at bat.  With SEE HER BE HER, the message to that next generation is clear—if they see her, they can dream to one day be her.

In addition to her Grassroots Baseball work, Jean continues to shoot the Major League game from Spring Training through the World Series. Her diverse portfolio also includes having helped build the archive of the world-renowned National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum.  Jean’s work is routinely featured in prestige media and has been on exhibit in America’s most eminent historical institutions, including the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, the Smithsonian and the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

She is honored to be designated by Sony as one of its select Sony Artisans of Imagery, a partnership with a small collection of visual artists worldwide.  Through her popular workshops, she shares her techniques, her insights, and her love of images—both the power of pictures, and the stories they tell.

Jean is the author/photographer of three books in the Grassroots Baseball Series: Where Legends Begin (2019), Route 66 (2022), and See Her Be Her (2024), with proceeds from all books benefitting the Grassroots Baseball non-profit organization.

Jean regularly speaks to corporate groups and students and she tours with the Changemaker Speaker Series, presenting in large performing arts venues across North America.