Gillian Laub is a photographer and filmmaker based in New York. Laub has spent the past two decades investigating political conflicts, exploring complex family and community relationships, and challenging assumptions about cultural identity. Laub’s first monograph, Testimony (Aperture), began as a response to the second intifada in the Middle East. Laub spent over a decade exploring issues of racism in the American South, which became Laub’s first feature-length documentary film, Southern Rites, which premiered on HBO. Her monograph, Southern Rites (Damiani) and traveling exhibition are used as a teaching tool in schools and institutions across the country. Laub's newest monograph Family Matters (Aperture), spanning over twenty years of photographs, explores how society’s biggest questions are revealed in our most intimate relationships; zeroing in on the artist's family as an example of how Donald Trump’s knack for sowing discord and division has impacted communities, individuals, and households across the country. An exhibition of Family Matters opened at the International Center of Photography in conjunction with the publication, and is now on view at The CJM. Family Matters has been reviewed by The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and The New Yorker, amongst others.
Laub regularly contributes to the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker among other publications. Her photo essays and photographs have won numerous awards including most recently the Taylor Wessing prize for her portrait of the Obamas, which was exhibited at The National Portrait Gallery. She is a recent recipient of an NEA grant, a New York Foundation of the Arts Fellow, the Aaron Siskind Fellowship, and a distinguished alumni award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Laub has been interviewed on The View, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, Good Morning America, Times Talks, and numerous others. Laub’s work is widely collected and exhibited, and is included in the collections of the Brooklyn Art Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The High Art Museum, The Jewish Museum, Rose Art Museum, Corcoran Gallery of Art, and a wide range of corporate and private collections.
