Lynn Goldsmith

Lynn Goldsmith is a multi-awarded portrait photographer whose work has appeared in Life, Newsweek, Time, Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, People, Elle, Interview, and The New Yorker. She was first recognized for her portraits of celebrities. She is the founder of LGI Photo Agency, an organization that represents the work of over two hundred photographers worldwide. Established in 1976, LGI was one of the first agencies to specialize in servicing celebrity portraiture for editorial usage. LGI was sold in 1997 so that Lynn could more fully focus on making her own images.

Ironically, Goldsmith’s new work would question the purpose of traditional portraits at a time when her own “Rock and Roll” portrait photography was receiving critical acclaim. She wanted to develop a way to confront portraiture in a new, more personal way. Her examination began when she started photographing high-end department store windows throughout New York City. Goldsmith creates her own fictional narrative, using herself as the subject, to produce in front of the backdrop. She stylizes her self-portraits and then digitally combines them with the “story-book” exhibit of the windows. Her photographs are hybrids of fantasy and reality, offering greater investigation into subjective reality photography than found in a typical portrait. They are commentaries about living in a consumer-based world that defines us by our possessions.

The series The Looking Glass delves into the psychological relationship between what one sees and what one imagines. Through the combination of Art History, Hollywood cinematography, and fashion ideals with various characters drawn from myths, religion, and fairy tales, she explains that her portraits “hinge on the broader question of what it means to be human.”