Biography

Photography has been Elizabeth Heyert's passion since she was 16. It led her to the Royal College of Art in London, where she studied with Bill Brandt, and back to New York where she wrote her first photography book, and established a thriving commercial photography business. She is the author of numerous books of and about photography including THE GLASS-HOUSE YEARS, a history of 19th century portrait photography, METROPOLITAN PLACES, one of the classic anthologies of 20th century interior design, which she wrote and photographed, and the award winning photography book from her series, THE TRAVELERS. Recently she has captured the attention of the art world with a photographic trilogy of experimental portraits, THE SLEEPERS, THE TRAVELERS, and THE NARCISSISTS.

After shooting around the world for publications such as The New York Times, New York Magazine, American and British Vogue, Elle Décor, and Architectural Digest, and for clients including Ralph Lauren, Cartier, American Express, and Tiffany & Co. her successful career allowed her to close her commercial studio in 1999, to return to a more personal exploration of photography. She began THE SLEEPERS with the idea of experimenting with unconventional forms of portrait photography. Within three years she was offered her first one-person show of these works, which opened at the Edwynn Houk gallery in New York, in January 2003.

THE SLEEPERS, a series of monumental toned black and white portraits of sleeping nudes, is a meditation on the mystical world of sleep and the naked emotions of the unconscious. Reviewing the exhibit, The New Yorker wrote that the photographs: "conjure thoughts of human fragility and impermanence even if the sleepers have become heroic sculptures rising from a deep slumber." Sei Swann/D.A.P. published a monograph of THE SLEEPERS, with an essay inspired by the works written by the playwright John Guare, in January 2003.

Heyert's obsession with sleep and oblivion led her inevitably to photograph THE TRAVELERS, a series of large-scale color post-mortem portraits. Unlike most post-mortem photographs, Heyert presents the dead as she would the living, beautifully dressed against a black background with the traditional lighting of a formal portrait. First exhibited in a one-person show at the Edwynn Houk gallery in New York in 2005, the photographs stirred discussion and controversy. In a feature article about the works, the New York Times described them as a "peek beneath the surface at the vibrant, living face beneath the mask of death." Scalo Verlag published her book, THE TRAVELERS in March 2006. At the end of the year PHOTO EYE named THE TRAVELERS one of the best photography books of 2006.

The 30 x 40 inch photographs have been widely exhibited internationally: at the Musee de L'Elysee in Switzerland; at the Hayward Gallery in London; in Austria in New Art/New York: Reflections of the Human Condition; and in a solo museum show at the Malmo Museer in Sweden. In May 2007, 18 life size prints of THE TRAVELERS were exhibited as the sole inhabitants of a small island in the Netherlands, accessible only through an ancient stone tunnel, in an installation entitled IN MEMORIAM. The works have also been the subject of television programs by ARD Kulturweltspiegel in Germany and by TVE Spain, a National Public Radio program, and feature articles in The New York Times, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, El Mundo, and in the Swiss publications Le Temps and Femina, among others.

Heyert's work has also been extensively reviewed and discussed in leading international publications such as the Times London, Le Monde, and Stern and in contemporary publications such as nest and Dazed and Confused. Her photographs are part of the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, as well as numerous private collections. She has won Outstanding Photographer awards from Ogilvy & Mather in Britain, and Nikon in the US.

She is currently finishing work on the final part of her portrait trilogy, THE NARCISSISTS, a series of life-size color triptychs taken through a two-way mirror. With THE NARCISSISTS Heyert again assumes the role of observer, voyeur, and outsider. Shooting through mirrored glass and invisible to her subjects, she is a silent witness to the private emotions of men and women immersed in their own reflected images.

When she is not shooting on location, Heyert works in a studio overlooking the Highline in the Chelsea section of New York City. She lives in Greenwich Village with her husband Harry Elliott and her silver dapple dachshund, Pi.