Sophie Schwartz

Sophie Schwartz (b. 1995 Cleveland, OH) is an artist living and working between New York and Cleveland, OH. Their research positions collaboration as an entry point to investigate grief, memory and queerness. At the core of their practice are interpersonal relationships and the dance of making images with other people. They use photographs to capture how people can see one another within the frame and beyond it, revealing the tension between the performance and authentic, the past and present, and the photographer and model. Using a view camera and black-and-white film roots their practice in early photographic history while disrupting the traditional process with the contemporary queer subject.

Schwartz received an MFA from Yale School of Art in 2023 and a BA in Modern Culture + Media from Brown University in 2017. They were awarded the Richard Benson Prize and Harvey Geiger Travel Fellowship from Yale University and were a finalist for the Dorothea Lange–Paul Taylor Prize, Critical Mass and the Palm Photo Prize. Their work has been exhibited at LaMama Galleria, François Ghebaly, AMANITA, Penumbra Foundation, Cleveland Print Room and Silver Eye Center for Photography, among others. They’ve worked with publications including VICE, Vogue, BOOOOOOOM, WÜL Magazine, PIQUE and Architectural Digest. They were an artist-in-residence at Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, Haystack and Cleveland Foundation Creative Fusion Residency, with upcoming residencies at Penumbra Foundation and Visual Studies Workshop. Their first book was published by Tall Poppy Press in 2023.