Amy Elkins (b. 1979 Venice, CA) is a photographer based in the Greater Los Angeles area. She received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her photographs explore notions of vulnerability, identity and transitory states. Elkins’ earlier work, Wallflower, looked into the nuances of gender identity and the male psyche. In her more recent work, Elkins investigates additional aspects of male identity through projects Elegant Violence, looking to young Ivy League rugby athletes moments after their game and Black is the Day, Black is the Night, which explores masculinity, vulnerability and identity through correspondence with men serving life and death row sentences in some of the most maximum security prisons in the US.
Elkins has been exhibited and published both nationally and internationally, including at Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna, Austria; the Carnegie Art Museum in California; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in Minnesota; North Carolina Museum of Art; Light Work Gallery in Syracuse and Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York among others. Elkins has been awarded with The Lightwork Artist-in-Residence in Syracuse, NY in 2011, the Villa Waldberta International Artist-in-Residence in Munich, Germany in 2012. and most recently the Aperture Portfolio Prize in 2014.
In June of 2008 Amy Elkins and Cara Phillips co-founded wipnyc.org, a platform for showcasing both established and emerging women in photography. Elkins is represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York.
Male ballet dancers, as young as 14, unknowingly challenge our ideas of masculinity and athletic sports, while pushing us to reconsider our notions of gender and vulnerability.
A conceptual exploration into many facets of human identity using notions of time, accumulation, memory and distance — based on personal correspondences with men serving life and death-row sentences in maximum security prisons in the USA.
