Gary Schneider


Gary Schneider is a South African-born American photographer known for his portraiture and self-portraits. According to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, which awarded him a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013, his "early work in painting, performance, and film remain integral to his explorations of portraiture. He strives to marry art and science, identity and obscurity, figuration and abstraction, the carnal and the spiritual."

Life and education

Gary Schneider was born in East London, South Africa and was raised in Cape Town. His BFA is from Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town and his MFA is from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn.
By the time Schneider enrolled at the University of Cape Town in 1975, "the world of art and ideas—in particular, forms of conceptual art that used the body as a medium to explore phenomenology and behavior—had begun to provide an essential reprieve, allowing him to construct and control a space of his own."
In the late '70s, Schneider left South Africa for New York City to work for Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theater. There he met his partner John Erdman, a performer in conceptual film, video, and theatre production. The pair formed Schneider/Erdman Inc. in 1981 "through which Schneider quickly rose to prominence as a master printer of other artists' photographs."

Career

In 1977, Schneider had his first solo exhibition at Artists Space where he did an installation and performance. Following the exhibition, he continued to make films; most notably Salters Cottages completed in 1981. A book of Salters Cottages film stills was published by Dashwood Books in 2019.
In 1998, he completed "Genetic Self-Portrait," which is a set of fifty-five photographs that make up fourteen images of his own body. The work was exhibited in the Musée de l'Élysée in Lausanne, Switzerland as well as the International Center of Photography in New York City and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. The book was published by Light Work, Syracuse in 1999.
"Portraits", a survey of his work, was mounted at Harvard Art Museums in 2004. It traveled to the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu. A fully illustrated catalog was published by Yale Press.
Aperture published his “"Nudes" in 2005 and exhibited the life-size photographs in New York. The exhibition traveled to the Reykjavik Art Museum in 2010. A survey exhibition, "Flesh", was mounted by the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego in 2008.
"HandBook" is Schneider's 2010 artist book published by Aperture and printed by Schneider on a print-on-demand press. "Handbook, South African Artists", Schneider's Guggenheim Fellowship project, was published by Fourthwall Books in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2015.

Solo museum exhibitions

Schneider's work is represented in many museums including: