David Benjamin Sherry

b. 1981

Born Stony Brook, New York, 1981, lives and works in New Mexico

My queerness rejects the invasive, destructive policies and rhetoric that shape(d) our society’s conception of the West—with its illusory, selective promises of liberty—fabricated from stolen land, systematically abused and destroyed by this intrinsically unsustainable way of life. These photographs represent resistance, self-determination and optimism—core American values—imperiled as the land itself. — David Benjamin Sherry

Artwork

Exhibitions

09.11–10.26.2019
American Monuments
Salon 94 Bowery

David Benjamin Sherry

06.07–08.04.2017
Pink Genesis
Salon 94 Bowery

David Benjamin Sherry

09.07–10.31.2014
Climate Vortex Sutra
Salon 94 Bowery

David Benjamin Sherry

04.26–06.02.2012
Astral Desert
Salon 94 Bowery

David Benjamin Sherry

Biography

Photo of David Benjamin Sherry in Alaska, 2019, by Reka Reisinger

David Benjamin Sherry is a New Mexico-based artist who is both challenging and reinvigorating American photography. Best known for his colorful landscape photographs, his work revolves around interests in environmentalism, queer identity, and alternative film processes broght upon by the desire to explore the last remaining wilderness in America. Through numerous projects, Sherry’s work expresses deep concern for the rapidly changing environment, while continuing to sustain a queer sensibility in the hetero-male dominated canon of landscape photography. Sherry uses a large format 8x10 film camera in order to reflect and understand our connection within the contemporary American landscape.

Sherry was born in 1981 in Stony Brook, NY and currently lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He received his BFA in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design in 2003 and his MFA in Photography from Yale University in 2007 where he was awarded the Richard Dixon Welling Prize. In 2010 he received the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Visual Arts Grant. A multi-part installation of his work was exhibited in Greater New York 2010 at MoMA PS1, New York, a survey show organized by Klaus Biesenbach Connie Butler, and Neville Wakefield. His work has been exhibited in numerous solo presentations and also included in many group presentations including: The Anxiety of Photography, Aspen Art Museum (2011), New York Minute at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2011), Out of Focus at Saatchi Gallery, London (2012), Lost Line, LACMA Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2013), What is a Photograph? at ICP International Center for Photography, New York (2014), Fotofocus Biennial, Cincinnati, Ohio (2014), Color Fields at MassArt Museum (2015), and Ansel Adams In Our Time, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston(2018).

His work is in permanent collections at The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY,The Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, NC, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, Wexner Center of the Arts, Columbus, OH, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, The RISD Museum, Providence, RI, The Saatchi Collection, London, UK, The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, FL, and The Marciano Foundation, Los Angeles, CA.

CV

Press

02.01.2016
David Benjamin Sherry
Moran Bondaroff

Artforum

10.17.2014
Photographs of Urgent Wilderness
Jeremy Polacek

Hyperallergic

09.22.2014
One Photographer’s Beautiful and Devastating Response to Climate Change
David Rosenberg

Slate

05.01.2012
David Benjamin Sherry Looks West
Ashley W. Simpson

Interview

10.17.2008
David Benjamin Sherry
Kin Woo

Dazed