Author Description

As one of the leading artists of her generation, Sam Taylor-Wood is acclaimed for her compelling psychological portraits in photography, film and video. Over the last several years they've included a series of still photographs of male celebrities crying, and a short video observing the English footballer David Beckham as he sleeps. Each piece creates a slightly enigmatic situation replete with latent energy. Taylor-Wood is compulsively examining the contemporary psyche and the place of the individual within the social group, and in order to do so, she is displaying the vulnerability and fragility of the human body and self. Sam Taylor-Wood presents the artist's most iconic pieces alongside previously unpublished images from her own archives, including personal, reportage and documentary work. She asked musicians and writers who have inspired her to contribute text, and Nick Cave, Peter Doroshenko, James Fox, Harland Miller, Rufus Wainwright and Ossian Ward complied. Their writing appears alongside an in-depth interview with the artist by Annushka Shani.