Lynn Hershman Leeson

Camera Woman

September 10 - October 25, 2025

Camera Woman (Phantom Limb), 1987

Gelatin silver print

20 x 24 inches

50.8 x 61 cm

Edition of 8 plus 2 artist's proofs

P.O.R.

Over the past five decades, Lynn Hershman Leeson has been internationally acclaimed for her art and films. One of the most influential media artists, she is widely recognized for her innovative work investigating issues that are now recognized as key to the workings of society: the relationship between humans and technology, identity, surveillance, and the use of media as a tool of empowerment against censorship and political repression.

Created between 1985-1988 and prior to the advent of photoshop, the Phantom Limb collages illustrate the more insidious impacts of mass media and technology on women’s bodies. These works borrow from the visual language of advertising, fusing female forms with technology. Seductively posed women merge with cameras, TV screens, and electrical plugs, pointing to ways in which gendered mass media representations shape and distort women’s self-image. At once alluring and disarming, these black-and-white photo collages grapple with the absorption of female identity into modern media at a time when the depths of this issue were just beginning to be explored.

Lynn Hershman Leeson (b. 1941) lives and works in San Francisco, California. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at: Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Nevada; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Momenta Biennale de l’image, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Canada; TeTuhi, Auckland, New Zealand; Simian, Copenhagen, Denmark; Altman Siegel, San Francisco, California; New Museum, New York; Julia Stoschek Foundation, Düsseldorf, Germany; Musée d'Art moderne et contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland; Bridget Donahue, New York; KM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany [Civic Radar retrospective]; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; de Young Museum, San Francisco, California; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany; Kunsthaus Graz, Austria; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio; Seattle Art Museum, Washington; and Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, UK.

Select group exhibitions include Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California; Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning, Shenzhen, China; GAMeC Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy; Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Geneva, Switzerland; Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei City, Taiwan; The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; the 59th Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy; Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California; Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland; 13th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois; Serpentine Galleries, London, UK; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France; Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas; Tate Modern, London, UK; and MoMA PS1, New York.

Hershman Leeson is a recipient of the Siggraph Lifetime Achievement Award, Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. In 2022, she was awarded a special mention from the Jury for her participation in the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. In 2023, Pratt Institute of Art, New York awarded her with an Honorary Doctorate and Creative Capital awarded her with their Distinguished Artist Award.

Hershman Leeson’s work is included in the following select public collections: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; de Young, San Francisco, California; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California; The Jewish Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Nasher Museum at Duke, Raleigh, North Carolina; San Jose Museum of Art, California; Seattle Art Museum, Washington; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; Tate Modern, London, UK; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.