Sam Taylor-Wood

Sam Taylor-Wood Photo

Sam Taylor-Wood born in 1967, is an English visual artist, filmmaker and photographer. Her father abandoned the family when she was just nine. Her mother is an astrologer and a yoga instructor raised her. She has a younger sister and a maternal half brother. Taylor-Wood went to Beacon Community College.

In the early 1990s, she began displaying her fine art photography skills. At this time, she was in a relationship with Henry Bond, artist. Later, she married Jay Jopling, an art dealer, in 1997.  After 11 years of marriage, they wanted to separate.

In 1994, she exhibited Killing Time, a multi-screen visual work in which to a opera score four people mimed. Since this retrospection, Taylor-Wood began focusing on such style. In 1996, she made Traversty of a Mockery and Pent-Up. Her first solo show was held in Chisenhale Gallery in East London. She was one of the nominees for the Turner Prize, 1998 but she was defeated by the painter Chris Ofili. However, in 1997 in Venice Biennale she won the Illy Café Prize for the category of the Most Promising Young Artist.

In 2000, she created a photomural for Selfridges, the department store in London, whilst it was being restored. The mural depicted twenty one cultural idols including Alex James, author; Ray Winstone and Richard E.Grant, actors; and Elton John. The figures were a reference to popular art works and past and present films.

The National Portrait Gallery commissioned Sam Taylor-Wood in 2002  to make a film portrait of David Beckham. She is renowned for Crying Men, her work on Hollywood’s celebrities crying. People such as Paul Newman, Laurence Fishburne, Robin Williams and Sean Penn. In 2006, at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, U.K., she had an exhibition. In the same year, she contributed Death Valley to Desrticted, the British version.

Taylor-Wood directed Nowhere Boy in 2008 based on John Lennon, singer of The Beatles; and in the same year, she was the director of Love You More, a short film. That year, she released, I’m in Love with a German Film Star, a dance track produced by Pet Shop Boys in Germany.

Later in 2009, at the 53rd yearly London Film Festival, Nowhere Boy was screened as a closing presentation.

In 2010, she was one of the nominees for BAFTA award but lost to Duncan Jones. A year later, she directed Überlin (music video) by R.E.M.. It starred Aaron Johnson, her fiancé. In 2011, she also made Daydream, a short film in collaboration with Solange Azagury Patridge. It was a support film for the launch of new jewellery design collection by Solange. In the film, Liberty Ross under the direction of Taylor-Wood plays a beautiful woman alone in her bedroom dreaming with her jewels. She was, in 2011 Birthday Honors for art services, was appointed as the Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

From an array of names like Steven Soderbergh, Gus Van Sant, Joe Wright and Angelina Jolie – Sam Taylor-Wood was selected to direct the video adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey, best selling sensuous book by E.L. James.

Taylor-Wood is one of the members of the visual artists’ group known as Young British Artists, a group of artists who initially began to exhibit in 1988 in London. In 2012, Sam Taylor-Wood and Aaron Taylor-Johnson got married.

Sam Taylor-Wood Photos