Neil Winokur

American, 1945

Neil Winokur proposes that it is possible to depict a culture through its most ordinary objects. He photographs a person, an animal or an object in front of a bright, monochromatic background with a Pop Art simplicity that recalls high-school headshots and illustrations in children’s primers.

Born in New York, New York, in 1945, Neil Winokur received a B.A. from Hunter College of the City University of New York in 1967. His work has been exhibited widely since 1982, when it was prominently included in the important book, Lichtbildnisse: Das Portrat in der Fotografie, from the Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn, Germany. Other important exhibitions include The Museum of Modern Art’s Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort, from 1991; The Photography of Invention, The National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1989; and Likeness: Portraits of Artists by Other Artists. ICA, Boston, 2005. His most recent publication is A-Z, a portfolio of 26 Cibachrome prints. His commissions have ranged from children to dogs to objects to meals.