BIOGRAPHY & PRESS
Neal Slavin is a world-respected photographer and film director. His work encompasses a professional career of over 40 years, during which he has photographed a myriad of subjects including such celebrities as Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford, Barbra Streisand, and Phil Collins. He is most known for his group portraits, which have been a significant focus throughout his career. He recently created a group portrait for T Magazine of film celebrities that have their roots in NYC, which includes Willem Dafoe, Glenn Close, LaTanya Richardson, Ed Harris, and Loretta Devine, among others.
His well-known photographic books include Portugal with an Afterword by Mary McCarthy (Lustrum Press/NY), When Two or More Are Gathered Together (Farrar, Straus & Giroux/NY) and Britons (Andre Deutsch/London & Aperture/NY).
His feature films include Focus, which he directed about the ravages of anti-semitism written by Arthur Miller, which stars William H. Macy and Laura Dern and features Meat Loaf and David Paymer.
His photographs are both privately and publicly collected. They are in numerous collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the International Center of Photography in New York, the National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of American Art in Washington, DC, the National Science and Media Museum in England, and the John Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
Slavin shows in both individual and group venues throughout the world and is represented by the Laurence Miller Gallery in New York. His work has been featured in the solo exhibition Britons at New York’s International Center of Photography and England’s National Science and Media Museum. He has also been honored with a retrospective exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and has been shown at the famous Les Rencontres D’Arles in France and at the Foto/Industria Biennale in Bologna in 2015. His most recent solo shows were at the Laurence Miller Gallery in New York in 2016 and, in 2017, at the Cincinnati Museum of Art and the Telfair Museums in Georgia.
In 2018, Slavin was twice featured in Photo Festivals in China: The Pingyao International Photo Festival, where he was the guest of honor, and the first Hefei Photo Festival at the Yami Art Museum. He was also featured in exhibitions in the Montclair Art Museum, NJ and Messums Wiltshire, Salisbury, England.
He has photographed for most of the major magazines around the world including The New York Times Magazine, The London Sunday Times Magazine, Esquire, Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung, Oprah Magazine, Rolling Stone, Life, Geo, and New York Magazine. His work was recently featured in the online magazine Slate in its blog called Behold. It was also featured in other online magazines such as Feature Shoot, Internazionale, BuzzFeed, Ain't Bad, It’s Nice That and L’Oeil de la Photographie.
He has been awarded a Gold Lion in Cannes for advertising, a Silver Cube from the Art Director’s Club of New York, five Addy Awards, and a Mobius Award. He is also the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship in addition to receiving two CAPS grants and a National Endowment in the Arts grant. The American Society of Magazine Photographers (ASMP) named him Corporate Photographer of the Year. Slavin has been included in Esquire Magazine's article on the Ten Toughest Photographs of 1975. He has also recently been honored with both The Cooper Union School of Art & Architecture’s esteemed President’s Citation and the Augustus Saint-Gaudens Medal for Artistic Achievement.
His teaching credentials include classes and workshops at Les Recontres d’Arles in Provence, The Cooper Union, Manhattanville College, The School of Visual Arts, The City University of New York at Queens College as well as serving as a visiting artist at the Art Institute of Chicago and teaching for several summers at the Ansel Adams Workshop in Yosemite National Park. He is currently teaching a special combined class for Pace University and the International Center of Photography at his studio in New York City where he also gives private workshops.
More than four decades after living in Portugal as a Fulbright Fellow during the repressive Fascist regime of Antonio Oliveira Salazar, Slavin has returned to shoot Fado e Saudade - a new book and film about the Portuguese people in contemporary society.
Slavin is also working on a book of photographs entitled The Prayer Project. CBS Sunday Morning is covering this for a segment to be aired in 2019. Once completed, a large-scale exhibition will travel world-wide.
PRESS LINKS:
UM PORTUGAL RARO, NUM TEMPO DE SOMBRAS - Publico.pt
CBS THIS MORNING: SATURDAY - Interview by Anthony Mason
LAURENCE MILLER GALLERY SHOW NEAL SLAVIN - A FORTY-YEAR CHRONICLE OF GROUPS AND GATHERINGS - New York Art World
FOUR NOT-TO-MISS PHOTOGRAPHY SHOWS - The New York Times
NEAL SLAVIN - A 40 YEAR CHRONICLE - PART 1 - L'Oeil de la Photographie
NEAL SLAVIN - A 40 YEAR CHRONICLE - PART 2 - L'Oeil de la Photographie
NEAL SLAVIN - A 40 YEAR CHRONICLE - PART 3 - L'Oeil de la Photographie
CAPTURING TOGETHERNESS - The New York Times FOCUSED GROUPS: NEAL SLAVIN'S HAPPY HUMANITY - IN PICTURES - The Guardian
NEAL SLAVIN FOTOGRAFOU PORTUGAL EM 1968 E VOLTOU PARA VER AS DIFERENÇAS - Observador
MY FAVORITE OLD CAMERA: NEAL SLAVIN'S LINHOF MASTER TECHNIKA - popphoto.com
GROUP PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER NEAL SLAVIN'S PRAYER PROJECT - americanphotomag.com
“PEOPLE THINK OF MY WORK AS ‘QUIRKY’ BUT I JUST DOCUMENT GROUPS”: Neal Slavin’s 40 years of mass portraiture - itsnicethat.com
“STAR TREK", Séminaire d’"Enterprise" - liberation.fr
AIPAD : THE PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW BY NEAL SLAVIN, THE MAKING OF - L'Oeil de la Photographie
APERTURE MEETS ZABAR'S - Take an exclusive tour of Aperture Spring Party sponsor, Zabar's with "The Photographer's Cookbook" contributor Neal Slavin and Aperture editor Denise Wolff - Aperture Foundation
THE PHOTOGRAPHERS' COOKBOOK: FROM ANSEL ADAMS TO STEPHEN SHORE: FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPHERS SHOOT THEIR FAVOURITE FOOD - The Guardian
COLONY ROOM PHOTO SHOOT WITH FRANCIS BACON - The Gagosian Quarterly; February 2016
NEAL SLAVIN: WHY I PHOTOGRAPH GROUPS - L'Oeil de la Photographie
NEAL SLAVIN - aint-bad.com
YOU'VE NEVER SEEN GROUP PORTRAITS LIKE THESE - slate.com
PUGS, TWINS AND BEAUTY QUEENS; NEAL SLAVIN IS THE MASTER OF GROUP PHOTOGRAPHY - itsnicethat.com
FOCUS REVIEW - Morning Edition; National Public Radio (Audio Clip)
GROUP SETTING - Minnesota Public Radio
CLOSE-UP OF BIAS - Los Angeles Times
BRINGING PREJUDICE INTO FOCUS - Boston Globe EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY - Philadelphia City Paper