Sharon Lockhart (American, b.1964) was born in Norwood, MA in 1964, and is an American photographer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, CA. She holds a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Lockhart first became known for
Auditions, the 1995 photographic series in which she recruited children to re-enact a romantic scene from
Small Change by
Francois Truffaut (French, 1932–1984). The formal, rational, and artistic approach, paired with sociological subject matter of this early series, form a duality that follows Lockhart throughout her career. In the late 1990s, Lockhart began to work abroad, creating a series of projects which addressed ethnographic filmmaking within a Fine Art context.
Goshogaoka (1998), presents a Japanese girls high school basketball team performing their routine, mixed with choreographed segments. Set in the historic Brazilian theater of the same name,
Teatro Amazonia captures the audience head-on as they listen to a minimalist concert—the chatter and conversation of its indifferent guests increasing as the concert progresses. In each film, Lockhart uses a stationary camera reminiscent of still photographic language. Her interest in both ethnography, and the interplay of film and photography, persist with some of her more recent works. In
Lunch Break, a portrait of workers at a Maine shipyard, Lockhart pays tribute to the often controversial tradition of photographing workers, with a fresh take on the genre. For the project, Lockhart photographed the workers’ lunchboxes and exhibited the images alongside a film of the workers on lunch break in a bleak industrial environment.
Lunch Break is indicative of another trademark of Lockhart’s work: While hinting at larger sociopolitical statements, the work focuses on human experience and expression by putting the spotlight on the everyday details. In 2012, Lockhart exhibited a multimedia collaboration with Noa Eshkol, an Israeli dance composer and textile artist at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Sharon Lockhart is Associate Professor at the University of Southern California. She has had solo exhibitions at museums such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, and Kunsthalle in Zurich, Switzerland.