Sheila Metzner

She graduated from the Higher School of Art and Design and the Faculty of Visual Communications of the Pratt Institute. After that, she was engaged in promotional activities. In the 1960s, she became the first woman to be promoted to art director by Doyle Dane Bernbach, an advertising agency. Thanks to this, she successfully collaborated with well-known photographers, including Richard Avedon, Melvin Sokolsky, Bob Richardson and Diana Arbus.[3]

Inspired by the work of 19th-century English photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, who painted pictures of her family, Sheila photographed her husband, artist Jeffrey Metzner, and her children. In the first 10 years, she shot only her family without publishing photos.

Her first show in New York was called Friends & Family. She decided to show part of the images to the director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, John Sarkovsky. In 1978, he immediately bought them and organized the exhibition Mirrors and Windows: American Photography Since 1960. There, her black and white portrait of her daughter Evyan was exhibited along with the works of such authors as Robert Mepplthorpe, Andy Warhol, Harry Vinogrand and William Eggleston. The second exhibition - Photography (Spring 1981): Couches, Diamonds and Pie - took place there. [9] After that, The New York Times and The Sunday Times published a photograph of Sheila's husband.[4]

Three months later, one of the representatives of Vanity Fair asked Metzner to photograph Jean Mare. After that, Alexander Lieberman proposed cooperation with Vogue.

At different times, Uma Thurman, Kim Basinger, Tilda Swinton, Mila Jovovich and David Lynch appeared in the lens of Metzner. [5] According to the photographer, Uma Thurman was the first celebrity she photographed. It is an interesting fact that Sheila lived in the same building with the actress's parents and photographed the future star as a child, but received a professional order for her shooting after 16 or 17 years. Later, Metzner worked with Thurman more than once - she shot an advertising campaign for the French fragrance and the Japanese cosmetics manufacturer Shiseido.

Sheila Metzner regularly collaborated with fashion houses from Valentino, Fendi, Ralph Lauren and Chloé. One of the most popular shots is considered to be a photograph of the model Marie Sophie, who kiss the statue. This is part of an ad campaign for Fendi. Fulfilling the order of Karl Lagerfeld, Sheila went to Rome. It was not possible to make the necessary shooting in the planned place and I had to find another house with similar statues. The model spontaneously kissed the statue, and Metzner accidentally saw this moment.

Metzner was one of the first photographers to start taking color photographs.

In addition to portraits, Metzner also shoots landscapes. In an interview, she talked about how she filmed the desert in Cairo for American Way magazine.

Photographs of the photographer are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the International Center for Photography and the Getty Museum.

She was married to the artist Jeffrey Metzner, gave birth to seven children, has 14 grandchildren.

Grandparents Sheila Metzner from Russia.[5]