Biography
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ portraits are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum, The National Portrait Gallery, and The New York Public Library among others. In 2004, his series of 700 art world portraits was accepted into the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Published books include “Art World“, “Timothy Greenfield-Sanders” a monograph, “XXX: 30 Porn-Star Portraits“, “Face to Face“, “Look: Portraits Backstage at Olympus Fashion Week“, “The Black List“, “The Latino List, “The Black List: 50”, “The Out List”, “The Boomer List, and “The Trans List.
To date, Greenfield-Sanders has directed and produced thirteen films. His first, “Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart“, a feature documentary on the legendary musician aired in 1998 on PBS’ American Masters, premiered at The Sundance Film Festival and in Europe at The Berlin Film Festival. The film won the 1999 Grammy Award for best music documentary.
“Thinking XXX“, aired in 2004 on HBO. A soundtrack CD was released in by Ryko Records. In October 2004, the XXX portraits were exhibited at Mary Boone Gallery in New York and then at Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco, Kluser Gallery in Munich, Berman/Turner Projects in Los Angeles, Paolo Curti Gallery in Milan and Howard Russeck Gallery in Palm Beach.
In 2006, Greenfield-Sanders photographed injured soldiers and marines for HBO’s film, “Alive Day Memories“. The images were widely published, shown in numerous exhibitions and purchased by The Library of Congress.
Between 2008-2010, Greenfield-Sanders produced and directed The Black List Project: a series of 3 documentaries for HBO, a traveling museum exhibition of portraits organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, a book with Atria, DVDs with Target and an educational initiative with The United Negro College Fund.
In 2011, his film “The Latino List: Volume 1” aired on HBO and his portraits were exhibited at The Brooklyn Museum. Also that year, 50 portraits from “The Black List” were exhibited at The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. In Septembe 2012, “The Latino List: Volume 2” aired on HBO.
In February 2012, “About Face: Supermodels Then and Now” premiered at The Sundance Film Festival and on July 30th aired on HBO. The film won the Women’s Image Network Award (The WIN Award) in 2012 for Best Documentary.
His film, “The Out List”, aired on HBO in June 2013.
Greenfield-Sanders’ film, “American Masters: The Boomer List” aired on PBS on September 23, 2014. His portraits of film’s subjects were exhibited at the Newseum in Washington D.C. and then travelled to over a dozen museum exhibitions.
On September 25th, 2015, “American Masters: The Women’s List” aired on PBS. In addition, “50 Portraits of Women” were exhibited at the Hearst Tower in New York and at the Fisher Landau Museum in Queens, NY.
Greenfield-Sanders’ 2016 film, The Trans List, aired on HBO. His most recent major portrait exhibition, images from all the “identity list” films, was at The Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles from September 2016 through February 2017.
Greenfield-Sanders’ latest film, Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, premiered at Sundance in January 2019, was folllowed by a extensive theatrical run, and is currently on Netflix and PBS’ American Masters. The film was nominated for 3 Emmy awards.
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders received a B.A. in Art History from Columbia University and a Master’s Degree in film from the American Film Institute in Los Angeles.
