Sam Taylor-Johnson: The Self and the Portrait

The definitive monograph on the internationally acclaimed photographer turned Hollywood filmmaker, this volume explores the distinctive approach to portraiture that has shaped every facet of her practice.

From her earliest photographs to her record-breaking feature film Fifty Shades of Grey, Taylor-Johnson has consistently investigated the boundaries between still and moving images, using both to create bold, psychologically rich portraits and self-portraits.

Drawing from extensive archives across her full range of media, the book captures the evolution of her vision—from the acrobatic vitality of her iconic early “floating” self-portraits to the quiet intensity of her celebrated Crying Men series, as well as intimate images made on set and behind the scenes of her film work. Together, these pictures reveal a career-long inquiry into what constitutes a portrait and how identity can be expressed, staged, disrupted, or reimagined.

Curated and accompanied by new writing by Taylor-Johnson herself, the book marks the artist’s renewed focus on photography. Published in tandem with a new series of self-portraits, it offers an expansive, deeply personal look at an artist whose innovative engagement with image-making continues to shape contemporary visual culture.

Sam Taylor-Johnson (formerly Sam Taylor-Wood) is an English artist, photographer, and filmmaker. Having risen to fame as one of the acclaimed Young British Artists of the 1990s, she has established herself alongside her fine-art career as an accomplished director, with successful cinematic adaptations as diverse as A Million Little Pieces and Fifty Shades of Grey as well as exhibitions at Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, Prada Foundation, Milan, Italy , Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, and Hayward Gallery, London. She lives and works in London. Lynsey Addario is an award-winning American photojournalist and author of books including Of Love & War and the New York Times bestselling memoir It’s What I Do. Tracey Emin is an English artist whose work has been exhibited extensively internationally, including major shows at Tate Modern, London, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.