Sam Taylor-Wood’s 2008 photographic exploration of the Yorkshire moors, Ghosts, is the latest exhibition in the Herstory Gallery of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. On view from October 30, 2010, through August 14, 2011, the series was inspired by Emily Brontë’s classic Victorian novel, Wuthering Heights, and its legendary atmospheric descriptions of the bleak, wild landscape.
For many years, Taylor-Wood kept a country house in the same West Yorkshire region where Emily Brontë and her famous literary and artistic family lived. Drawing inspiration from the Brontë sisters’ gothic romantic fiction, the artist followed the footpath from the stone parsonage where the Brontës lived and died up across the moors to Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse and the alleged setting of Wuthering Heights. In her photographs, she captures the stark and haunting character of the windswept moors and gray skies surrounding the area of Top Withens.
An English filmmaker, photographer, and conceptual artist, Taylor-Wood creates works of art that examine contemporary social and psychological human conditions by placing her subjects in enigmatic and highly stimulating situations. Her pieces often capture situations in which the sense of self is in discord.
Taylor-Wood has gained international fame with solo shows in Barcelona, Zurich, London, Washington, D.C., Milan, New York, Tokyo, Amsterdam, and Montreal. In 1997, she was nominated for the Turner Prize and received the Illy Café Prize for Most Promising Young Artist at the Venice Biennale. Her short film of 2008, Love You More, received the Short Filmmaking Award Honorable Mention at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for Best Short Film at the BAFTA Film Awards and the Golden Palm Award at the Cannes International Film Festival. Her feature-film directorial debut of 2009, Nowhere Boy, was nominated for four BAFTA Film Awards, including Outstanding British Film and Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director, or Producer.
Sam Taylor-Wood: “Ghosts” has been organized by Catherine Morris, Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, in the Herstory Gallery, a space devoted to subjects that explore the significant contributions of the women named in Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party. Emily Brontë, along with her sister Charlotte, are featured names on the Heritage Floor of this monumental work of feminist art.
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