NEW YORK, NY.- The definitive monograph on the work of internationally acclaimed artist and filmmaker, this book explores Sam Taylor-Johnson's distinctive approach to capturing the essence of the self within her photographic work.
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Sam Taylor-Johnson: The Self and the Portrait
A contemporary art volume on portraiture, identity, and image-making
Explore Sam Taylor-Johnson’s work through photography, film, portraiture, identity, self-representation, and the shifting language of contemporary image culture.
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“That is what it is to take a photograph – a portrait of somebody. It’s knowing and seeing, in the briefest of ethereal moments, something like a secret you have found. There’s the hit of a button and the steal of an eye, and all the history that belongs to it has been passed on. Gifted and taken.” -- Sam Taylor-Johnson
From her earliest self-portraits as a student at Goldsmiths to her intimate film-portrayals of the musical icons John Lennon and Amy Winehouse and the record-breaking adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey, Taylor-Johnson has consistently investigated the nature of selfhood, using both photography and film to create bold, psychologically rich portraits.
Sam Taylor-Johnson: The Self and the Portrait captures the evolution of her vision—from the quiet intensity of her celebrated Crying Men series to the acrobatic vitality of her iconic “floating” self-portraits. A new series of self-portraits, Self-Portrait in Dark Water, offers an expansive and profound look at an artist whose innovative engagement with image-making continues to shape contemporary visual culture.
Drawing from her extensive archive, Sam Taylor-Johnson: The Self and the Portrait features portraits of actors, artists and musicians including Burna Boy, Willem Dafoe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tracey Emin, Rachel Feinstein, Laurence Fishburne, Maggi Hambling, Philip Seymour-Hoffman, Courtney Love, Alexander McQueen, Miuccia Prada, Benicio del Toro, Florence Welch, and Forest Whitaker.
Curated and accompanied by new writing by Taylor-Johnson herself, the book celebrates the pictures that, seen together, reveal a career-long inquiry into what constitutes a portrait and how identity can be expressed, staged, disrupted, or reimagined.
The acclaimed American photojournalist Lynsey Addario has contributed an essay that explores how the power of Taylor-Johnson’s gaze and her authenticity come to define her portraits.
Tracey Emin’s insightful text reflects on their 30 years of friendship, and a deep artistic connection established at the outset of their careers. Paying homage to Taylor-Johnson’s singular determination, “even when faced with the perils life can throw”, Emin writes with her characteristic candidness, offering a deeply personal perspective on Sam Taylor-Johnson’s life and work and the significance of time and mortality within her practice.
Sam Taylor-Johnson (formerly Sam Taylor-Wood) is an English artist, and filmmaker. Having risen to fame as one of the acclaimed Young British Artists of the 1990s, she has established herself alongside her fine-art career as an accomplished director, with successful cinematic adaptations as diverse as A Million Little Pieces and Fifty Shades of Grey as well as exhibitions at Kunsthalle Zürich, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, Prada Foundation, Milan, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid and Hayward Gallery, London. She lives and works in London. Lynsey Addario is an award-winning American photojournalist and author of books including Of Love & War and the New York Times bestselling memoir It’s What I Do. Tracey Emin is an English artist whose work has been exhibited extensively internationally, including major shows at Tate Modern, London, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
