Sarah Charlesworth
Biography
Sarah Charlesworth was born in 1947 in New Jersey, and passed away in 2013 at Falls Village in Connecticut. She is best known as an established figure of the Pictures Generation, as well as a prominent conceptual photographer of the 1970s and 1980s.
Charlesworth’s influential body of work deconstructs the conventions of photography and establishes the medium’s centrality in our perception of the world. Charlesworth stages volatile worlds, isolating objects on monochrome backgrounds to reveal the constructed nature of visual culture and question systems of image distribution.She graduated in 1969 from the Barnard College in New York. During her life, she taught photography for many years at the School of Visual Arts in New York and also at the Rhode Island School of Design and at Princeton University.
Charlesworth has had several solo exhibitions including Desire and Seduction at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (2025); Neverland at Karma, Los Angeles (2023); Modern History at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (2021); Sarah Charlesworth: Image Language, curated by Christine Robinson at Printed Matter, New York (2020); In-Photography at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (2019); Doubleworld at LACMA, Los Angeles (2017); Selected by Liz Deschenes at Campoli Presti, Paris (2016); Sarah Charlesworth: Doubleworld, curated by Massimiliano Gioni and Margot Norton at the New Museum, New York (2015); Stills, curated by Matthew S. Witkovsky, at the The Art Institute of Chicago (2014); Available Light at Baldwin Gallery, Aspen (2013).
Her work has been featured in several group shows including Swallow the Moon at Amanita, New York (2026); Borderline at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (2025); Visible Communication: Works from the Baruch College Art Collection at Mishkin Gallery, New York (2025); The Writing's on the Wall: Language and Silence in the Visual Arts at Hill Art Foundation, New York (2024/2025); To Exalt The Ephemeral: The (Im)permanent Collection at BAMPFA, Berkley (2024/2025); Tabula Rasa at Paul Cooper Gallery, New York (2024); Vicolo della Penitenza 11/A, MACRO-Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome (2023); The Artist’s Eye: Tammy Rae Carland, David Huffman, Lava Thomas, John Zurier at Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley (2022); Off The Record at Guggenheim Museum, New-York (2021); American Art 1961-2001 at Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (2021); Pictures Revisited at Metropolitan Museum, New York (2020); Brand New: Art and Commodity in the 1980s at Hirshhorn Museum, Washington (2018); Recto Verso at Fondazione Prada in Milan (2015); the 77th Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2014); Shock of the News at National Gallery of Art, Washington (2012); Signs of a Struggle: Photography in the Wake of Postmodernism at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2011); September 11 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011); The Last Newspaper at the New Museum, New York (2010); The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2009); The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography 1960-1982 at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2004).
