Reviewing three decades of her own pictures, including her sam taylor-johnson crying men series, was, in Sam Taylor-Johnson’s words, “fucking torture.” The artist spoke to us over Zoom about Sam Taylor-Johnson: The Self and the Portrait, a book drawn from more than 30 years of her archive.
“Where’s that time gone?” she asks. Going through the pictures meant revisiting her own life and her children growing up. Making the book became a process of reckoning with that time.
A camera as a voice
Taylor-Johnson studied sculpture at Goldsmiths in London. She rose to prominence in the 1990s alongside the Young British Artists. “I had a camera, and that was my voice,” she says.
The book gathers her self-portraits, along with portraits of friends and well-known sitters. They include Willem Dafoe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tracey Emin, Philip Seymour-Hoffman, Courtney Love, Alexander McQueen and Miuccia Prada. Together with the sam taylor-johnson crying men pictures, the portraits trace a practice that looks past surface personas.
The hardest part of portraiture, she says, is looking past the face a sitter presents. She describes a session with Paul Newman, which she also writes about in an essay for the book. In person, she saw an emotional, soulful and powerful man. Through the camera, he became Paul Newman, movie star.
The picture only came once Newman understood what she was after. “He was such a collaborator,” she says. “Once he clocked that I was trying to look into his soul and find vulnerability, he gave that.”
For Taylor-Johnson, the magic of portrait photography lies in seeing someone, chasing that quality through the lens and freezing it.
Portraiture that bends reality also drives Rafael Silveira’s practice, and Rafael Silveira’s Surreal Portraits and Popsicles in L.A. shows how sitters can be reimagined in strange, striking settings.
Crying Men: the sam taylor-johnson crying men series
Vulnerability runs through the book, most visibly in her sam taylor-johnson crying men series. Taylor-Johnson made the series between 2002 and 2004. She asked male actors including Robin Williams, Daniel Craig and Sean Penn to sit in front of her camera and cry. The request reversed the expectations audiences bring to men on screen.
Forest Whitaker’s session for sam taylor-johnson crying men took three years to arrange. “It took me three years to get to the place where we actually walked into the room,” she says. Once they were there, she worked fast. “I don’t spend hours,” she says.
Self-portraits and She Was I
The exhibition She Was I runs alongside the book at Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta. It opens with black-and-white photographs Taylor-Johnson took as a student in London in the early 1990s. It then moves through to recent work that peels back the psyche. The show runs until 23 January 2027.
Her self-portraits show her body in unexpected positions. In the Self Portrait Suspended series, she floats in mid-air, free of the physical limits left by past illnesses, including breast cancer. In Wired, shot in 2020 in Joshua Tree, the rigging that holds her above the California desert is part of the composition.
Self Portrait in Dark Water, in which water holds her body in suspension, is a powerful new series. Taylor-Johnson says the ageing process is visible in some of the work. She can now look at the personal material without feeling too emotionally traumatised.
Film, digital and the edit
Curation proved the hardest task. Taylor-Johnson says she has been trawling through digital and print images, and she regrets putting down her film camera. Digital shooting produces thousands of frames where film produced probably hundreds.
For a longer view of how one photographer‘s portraits and fashion work evolve over time, Irving Penn’s Six-Decade Fashion Photography in Paris offers a sweeping look at a career built on careful selection.
She says film makes a photographer more aware of each shot on a roll. Her children are studying photography, and she has told them to learn on film. “It forces you to learn how to frame,” she says.
Choosing and refining the final selection was tough, she adds. She says that if she made the book again tomorrow, it would be a completely different book.
Publication details and reception
Rizzoli Electa publishes the book on 6 October 2026. The hardcover costs £55 in the UK and $75 in the US. The publisher lists 224 pages, although Emma Jacob’s review in Aesthetica counts 121.
Lynsey Addario is an award-winning American photojournalist and author. Tracey Emin is an English artist whose work has been exhibited internationally. The book includes new writing by Taylor-Johnson, who curated the selection herself.
For an artist who once called the camera her voice, the book reads as a long, candid conversation with her own archive.
Source: wallpaper.com
Frequently asked questions
When did Sam Taylor-Johnson make her Crying Men series?
Sam Taylor-Johnson made the Crying Men series between 2002 and 2004. In it, male actors were asked to sit in front of her camera and cry.
Which actors appear in Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Crying Men series?
The article names Robin Williams, Daniel Craig, and Sean Penn as male actors who sat for the Crying Men series. Forest Whitaker’s session took three years to arrange.
When and how much is the Sam Taylor-Johnson: The Self and the Portrait book?
Rizzoli Electa publishes the book on 6 October 2026. The hardcover costs £55 in the UK and $75 in the US.
Where can you see the She Was I exhibition by Sam Taylor-Johnson?
The She Was I exhibition runs alongside the book at Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta. It runs until 23 January 2027.
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