Lynn Gilbert

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. Please discuss further on the talk page. (November 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This biography of a living person relies too much on references to primary sources. Please help by adding secondary or tertiary sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. Find sources: "Lynn Gilbert" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (September 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Lynn Gilbert (born January 7, 1938) is a photographer and author best known for her portraits of illustrious women from the 1920s to the 1980s and her documentation of Turkish homes and interiors.

Gilbert grew up in iNew York and attended Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, Bachelor of Arts (Art History) 1959 and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, New York, Bachelor of Science (Fashion Design) 1962.

Gilbert began her career as a photographer documenting the lives of her children in the 1960s, and used the camera to comment on socio-economic diversity with the photographic portraits of others’ children. In 1972 the Pace Gallery commissioned her to photograph the legendary sculptor Louise Nevelson^[1]. Her interest in portraiture developed into a series titled “Illustrious Women”^[2] that became the photographic accompaniment of the book of oral biographies, Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times,^[3] published 1981. The book recounts the rich oral histories of forty-six pioneering women of the twentieth century from the arts and sciences, athletics and law, mathematics, and politics, and includes the portraits and oral biographies of such notable women as Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Julia Child, Billie Jean King, and Diana Vreeland.

Extensive travel to Turkey and Uzbekistan produced a photographic record of the historic home of the area, exhibited widely in Turkey, and recorded in the book, The Silk Road: Then and Now (2) published 2015.^[4] The book records traditional homes of Turkey located along the ancient Silk Road, homes both humble and affluent, with a mix of furniture, art, linens, household serving items and vibrantly colored, centuries-old handwoven rugs. Her images are governed by design, color, balance and light. Then as Jack Morgan wrote for Texas Public Radio when the photographs were displayed in the Lone Star State ... "The pictures displayed at the Roosevelt Library almost look like paintings. Light, fabric, furniture—a very different kind of beauty. And something’s missing: no electric devices".^[5]

In 2018 her work was the subject of a special exhibition "Women: A Time Capsule of the American Feminist Movement” at Thockmorton Fine Art at "The Photography Show" in New York City.^[6] In February of 2024 Gilbert's photographs were the subject of a solo exhibition titled Time Capsule at the Ilon Art Gallery in Harlem.^[7][8]

Gilbert's work is held in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery a constituent institution of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC , the New York Historical Society in New York City, and the Richard and Ellen Sandor family collection, among numerous other institutions and private collections.^[9][10][11]

In 2022 Gilbert's reknown potrait of Louise Nevelson received prominence anew when it appeared on posters all around the city of Venice during the Venice Biennale and as Sarah Douglas wrote in ARTnews ..."Gilbert’s image of Nevelson has become something of a symbol for this year’s Biennale".^[12]

• Children in Repose is Gilbert's photographic series of children from more than 100 families of varying socio-economic backgrounds in New York City in the mid 1970s.
• Lynn Gilbert's photographs of Turkey have been widely exhibited in Turkey and at the Godwin-Ternbach Museum in Queens. Her portraits are part of the permanent collection of The National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC.
• Gilbert is a contributing writer to the Turkish magazine, Cornucopia.

• Media related to Lynn Gilbert at Wikimedia Commons
• Official website