Gary Schneider (b. 1954) was born in South Africa and raised in Cape Town. He earned a BFA from the University of Cape Town and an MFA from Pratt Institute in New York City, where he now lives and works. Schneider’s work merges biology and portraiture, most notably in series like The Genetic Self-Portrait and Botanical. In Genetic Self-Portrait (completed 1998), he combined 19th-century negatives with modern medical microscopy, collaborating with scientists to challenge traditional notions of portraiture and photographic technique. The series was exhibited internationally and published as a book by Light Work in 1999. Botanical began in 1989 as an homage to historical botanical studies and expanded through scientific collaboration, highlighting Schneider’s fascination with science, biography, and found objects.
In 2004, Schneider’s career-spanning exhibition Portraits was shown at Harvard’s Sackler Museum, with a catalogue published by Yale University Press. The following year, Aperture Foundation published Nudes, a series of life-size, confrontational photographs of naked subjects created using long exposures and penlight illumination, evoking a painterly effect reminiscent of Francis Bacon. This show toured to the Reykjavik Art Museum in 2010. That same year, Aperture also published HandBook, further exploring themes of identity and biography.
Schneider’s work is held in major collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, National Gallery of Canada, Guggenheim Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, George Eastman House, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harvard Art Museums, and Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Alongside his experimental practice, Schneider is renowned as a master printer, having produced prints for artists such as Irving Penn. He currently teaches at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.
Other works available upon request.