Image: Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta
Sam Taylor-Johnson’s ‘She Was I’ runs at Jackson Fine Art from 22 October 2026 to 23 January 2027. The exhibition presents Taylor-Johnson’s powerful new series ‘Self Portrait in Dark Water’ to US audiences for the first time, with water holding her body in otherworldly suspension.
‘She Was I’ traces Taylor-Johnson’s psychologically rich exploration of the self through portraiture in photography and film, beginning with early black-and-white photographs made in London in the 1990s while she was a student, and continuing more than a decade later with images of herself suspended in her London studio, her body appearing weightless and seemingly held aloft by balloons.
In ‘Wired’, shot in Joshua Tree in 2020, Taylor-Johnson reveals and makes integral to the composition the fragile support mechanisms that elevate her body above the ground in the California desert.
Alongside these portraits, images of the artist’s family and friends were captured in the most familial private settings and possess a semi-autobiographical quality.
‘She Was I’ is Taylor-Johnson’s second solo exhibition with Jackson Fine Art.
