Jessica Craig-Martin

Born in 1963, when Jessica Craig-Martin enrolled at New York University she chose at first to study art history and anthropology. But she also took courses in photography at the city’s prestigious International Center of Photography. Alongside her artistic work, Craig-Martin also worked for five years as a photographer for American Vogue.

 

With her camera in hand, the artist Jessica Craig-Martin goes on safari for the world’s rich and beautiful. With her hunting ground comprising exclusive dinner parties, gala events, and movie premieres, the results of her shoots are close-ups from the world of glitz and glam, zeroing in on the habitus of the party guests she encounters. Craig-Martin's photographs are not only fascinating because of their snapshot aesthetic. In the tradition of Henri Cartier-Bresson, she captures the decisive moment. Having perfected the balance between chance and composition, the artist presents us with amusing scenes from the social lives of the über-rich. Her subjects are rarely identified in the photographs, and yet the iconic status symbols adorning their bodies do define them: their high heels, pinned-up coiffures, and designer handbags the embodiment not only of wealth but excess – as eccentric as hot dogs served on a silver platter. Lust, ecstasy, and indulgence are captured by the photographer in various situations, often in a humorous way.

 

Her works now are represented in many large collections such as those at the the Guggenheim Museum in New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, to name just a few. Her works have also been seen in solo exhibitions at large institutions such as the MoMA PS1 in New York, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid and the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt am Main.

 

Jessica Craig-Martin lives and works in New York.