Elizabeth Peyton: Portrait of an Artist

Peyton's first photography book is a quieter companion to the paintings: sixty-two portraits of friends and fellow artists, made across two decades and never intended as finished work.

Published by Damiani in 2009 following the exhibition at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the volume was edited by Richard Klein with a text by Rirkrit Tiravanija. The pictures were shot on 35mm, Polaroid and latterly digital cameras, and the book keeps their accidents intact — over- and underexposure, subjects drifting out of focus. Sitters include Marc Jacobs, Matthew Barney, Chloë Sevigny, Jake Chapman, Urs Fischer, Olafur Eliasson, Jonathan Horowitz, Spencer Sweeney and her gallerist Gavin Brown, along with a self-portrait.

Peyton does not describe herself as a photographer, but photographs have been the origin of her paintings from the beginning, and the book reads as the working substrate of that practice rather than a parallel career. She was born in Danbury, Connecticut in 1965 and lives and works in New York.