Sheila Metzner: From Life

Fashion and portrait photographer Sheila Metzner presents her life’s work, including her intimate family portraits in 1960s Woodstock, fashion editorials, nudes, and sacred landscapes.

This exquisite volume presents more than 300 photographs accompanied by the groundbreaking artist’s enchanting stories of the inspirations behind her critically acclaimed work. The first female art director at Doyle Dane Bernbach advertising agency in the 1960s, Sheila Metzner became a photographer while raising five children. In 1978, one of Metzner’s portraits became the hit of a controversial exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art; gallery shows and assignments from Alexander Liberman at Vogue soon followed. At a time when Avedon, Penn, and Piel commandeered its pages, Metzner became the first female photographer to receive steady work from Vogue. Always pushing artistic boundaries, Metzner’s distinctive photographic aesthetic soon positioned her as a contemporary master not only in fashion photography but also in fine art, portraiture, still life, and landscape.

With memoir-like vignettes that accompany her photos, this book is a deeply personal look at the artist’s career as a peer to fashion and film luminaries such as Diane Arbus and Richard Avedon. Featuring her renowned fashion editorials and acclaimed fine-art photography, this volume will appeal to both fashion and photography lovers.

Sheila Metzner’s photographs are featured in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and more. She has published four books. Hunter Drohojowska-Philp is author of numerous books M. Raven Metzner is a television producer and screenwriter.