She was I

Jackson Fine Art presents She was I, a survey of career-defining work by Sam Taylor-Johnson, one of Britain’s most internationally celebrated artists, photographers, and filmmakers. This extensive solo exhibition coincides with the publication of the artist’s major new monograph, Sam Taylor-Johnson: the self and the portrait, published by Rizzoli. The exhibition She was I traces Taylor-Johnson’s psychologically rich explorations of the self through portraiture in her photography and film work. Focusing on the self-portraits that are central to Taylor-Johnson’s practice, the selection begins with the early black and white photographs taken in London in the 1990s when she was a student. Then, more than a decade later, the artist returned to self-portraiture with images of herself suspended in her London studio, her body appearing weightless, seemingly held aloft by balloons. In Wired, shot in 2020 in Joshua Tree, Taylor-Johnson now reveals and makes integral to the composition the fragile support mechanisms that elevate her body above the ground in the California desert. Taylor-Johnson’s powerful new series Self portrait in dark water, in which she relies on water to hold her body in otherworldly suspension, will be presented to US audiences for the first time. The exhibition will also feature a selection of works from the series Crying men. Created between 2002-2004, Taylor-Johnson invited leading male actors to appear before her camera, sat in a moment of intimate reflection, their vulnerability exposed through the act of crying. In parallel to these recognizable individuals, the portraits of the artist’s family and friends captured in the most familial of private settings, possess a semi-autobiographical quality. Seen together, the works in She was I reveal Taylor-Johnson’s career-long inquiry into the nature of the self and how our individual and complex psyche can be, simultaneously, revealed and concealed.