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."
WWW Official Site

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.
When Schneider entered the University of Cape Town in 1975, conceptual art practices that used the body to examine phenomenology and behavior offered him a way to create and control his own space.
Schneider moved from South Africa to New York City in the late 1970s, where he worked for Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theater. There he met John Erdman, his partner, who performed in conceptual film, video, and theater. They established 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," a set of fifty-five photographs that form 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. Yale Press published a fully illustrated catalog.
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

Awards and grants

Books and catalogs

  • 1997: John in Sixteen Parts. Martin Kao, Deborah. Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston, MA; Stephen Daiter Photography, Chicago, IL; PPOW Gallery, New York, NY.
  • 1997: Recent Photographs. Carter, Dr. Curtis. The Haggerty Museum, Marquette University, Milwaukee, MI. Brochure.
  • 1999: Genetic Self-Portrait. Essays by Ann Thomas, Lori Pauli, and Bettyann Kevles. Light Work, Syracuse, NY.
  • 2001: Yezerski Family Portrait. Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston, MA.
  • 2004: Gary Schneider: Portraits. Martin Kao, Deborah. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT., in association with Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA.
  • 2005: Nudes. Aperture, New York, NY.
  • 2007: John 1989–2004. Snell, Eric. The Greenhouse Gallery, Guernsey, Channel Islands, UK.
  • 2010: HandBook, Aperture. New York, NY.
  • 2012: Portrait Sequences 1975. OneStar Press, Paris, France.
  • 2015: HandBook, South African Artists. Fourthwall Books, Johannesburg, South Africa.
  • 2018: Analog Culture: Printer's Proofs from the Schneider/Erdman Photography Lab, editor Jennifer Quick, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA.
  • 2019: Salters Cottages. Dashwood Books, New York, NY.

Museum collections

Schneider's work is represented in many museums, including: