Artist Statement
A former member of the US Sailing Team, and self taught in photography, over the past two years I have embarked upon a process of making photographic portraits of artists, in collaboration with them. This aspect of the work - the dialog that takes place between me and the subjects, which often evolves over a sustained period of time - is a fundamental part of the resulting images. I am looking for a degree of intimacy and collaboration that moves the work beyond documentary or commercial photography.

For my first solo gallery exhibition at White Columns this past March, I presented a discrete group of recent portraits, including those of Christopher Wool and Charline Von Heyl, Jack Pierson, Jeremy Deller, Jutta Koether, Emily Sundblad, Wolfgang Tillmans and Tomma Abts.

Accompanying the exhibition, I produced an issue of White Columns’ ‘zine ‘The W.C.’ that includes additional portraits of Agathe Snow, Jonathan Horowitz, Lizzi Bougatsos, Elizabeth Peyton, Spencer Sweeney, Collier Schorr, Rita Ackermann, Margaret Lee, James Siena, Sam Samore, Nick Abrahams, and T.J. Wilcox.


Since the White Columns exhibition, to date, I have self-published 11 xerox books, 10 of which were included in a self-published book show at the Photographer’s Gallery in London in June. The xerox books record portrait sessions with Wolfgang Tillmans and Collier Schorr; Nate Lowman; Leigh Ledare; Christopher Wool; Marlo Pascual; Eileen Quinlan; Sam Samore and myself; Padraig Timoney and myself; Richard Hell; Jon Savage; and most recently a zine titled ‘American Photography’ including portraits of Amy Yao, Jamie Isenstein, Nick Relph, Josh Smith, Adam Mcewen and myself.


As the body of work evolves I am increasingly interested how it becomes a kind of ‘double portrait’, of both the subjects and also of my personal development as an artist.


I am currently collaborating on a book with Christopher Wool to be published this fall.

(Other artists I have collaborated with on portraits of include, Larry Clark, Billy Childish, Anne Collier, John Kelsey, Brian Degraw, Judy Linn, Lawrence Weiner, Joyce Pensato, Kenny Scharf, Philip Taafe, Richard Phillips, Josephine Meckseper, Stephen Prina, David Salle, Rob Pruitt, Ricci Albenda, Tony Just, Ari Marcopoulos, Danny McDonald, Erik Parker, Dan Walsh, Olivier Mosset, Jules de Balincourt, Wayne Gonzales, Thomas Eggerer, John Tremblay, Bill Wurtz, Jeremy Eilers, Sean Landers, Kevin Landers, Matthew Ronay, Michelle Segre, Victoria Subunaris, Justine Kurland.)

My website is www.aubreymayer.com