Timothy Greenfield-Sanders: The Trans List

The Samuel Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz announces Timothy Greenfield-Sanders: The Trans List, an exhibition featuring 40 portraits and a film by legendary photographer and filmmaker Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.

Curated by Dorsky Museum curator of exhibitions and programs Anastasia James, the exhibition will be on display from August 29 through December 9, 2018, in The Dorsky’s Morgan Anderson Gallery and Howard Greenberg Family Gallery. A public opening reception will be held on Saturday, September 15, from 5–7pm.

Greenfield-Sanders’s The Trans List consists of a documentary film and portrait series exploring the range of experiences lived by Americans who identify as transgender.

The documentary, directed and produced by Greenfield-Sanders, features trans journalist and author Janet Mock conducting interviews with noteworthy figures including Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox. The film was first broadcast on HBO in December 2016.

Through the film and the accompanying portraits, Greenfield-Sanders provides a platform for a diverse group of individuals to tell their stories of identity, family, career, love, struggle and accomplishment.

The Trans List is part of a larger body of work titled “Identity: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders: The List Portraits,” which comprises 151 large-format portrait photographs across five installments (The Black List, The Latino List, The Women’s List, The Out List and The Trans List). The project illuminates the breakthrough of marginalized communities, and calls attention to cultural progress by sharing the stories of people who have overcome obstacles to achieve success in disparate walks of life. 

In conjunction with its presentation of Timothy Greenfield Sanders: The Trans List, The Dorsky Museum will open a related student-curated exhibition in its Seminar Room Gallery titled “Alive and Yelling: Trans Zines and Radical Subcultures.”

The student exhibition will feature a selection of zines that address the daily lives experienced by queer-identified people and embrace the diversity and intersectionality of the trans community that is often glossed over by the media.

About the artist
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders was born in Miami Beach, Florida in 1952. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University in Art History and a Master’s Degree in film from the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. He lives and works in New York City.

Greenfield-Sanders has achieved critical acclaim for his intimate portraits of world leaders and major culture figures. His portraits are in numerous museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum, The Whitney Museum and National Portrait Gallery, and his feature documentary Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart was awarded a Grammy in 1999.

Greenfield-Sanders has four books in print including his acclaimed XXX: 30 Porn-Star Portraits. In 2006, his photographs from the war in Iraq were published and exhibited worldwide, and purchased by the United States Library of Congress.

Related programs include a lecture performance by trans pioneer and gender theorist Kate Bornstein, and a screening of The Trans List followed by a Q&A with the artist and curator.