Series
Works
  • Dana Lixenberg, Walter Becker & Donald Fagen (Steely Dan), 1999
    Dana Lixenberg
    Walter Becker & Donald Fagen (Steely Dan), 1999
    Archival pigment print mounted on dibond, maple frame, museum glass
    Printed in two sizes
  • Dana Lixenberg, James Newell Osterberg Jr. (Iggy Pop), 1999
    Dana Lixenberg
    James Newell Osterberg Jr. (Iggy Pop), 1999
    Archival pigment print mounted on dibond, maple frame, museum glass
    Printed in two sizes
  • Dana Lixenberg, Louise Bourgeois, 1994
    Dana Lixenberg
    Louise Bourgeois, 1994
    Gelatin Silver print mounted on aluminum, walnut frame, museum glass
    Printed in two sizes
  • Dana Lixenberg, Sean Combs (Puff Daddy), 1995
    Dana Lixenberg
    Sean Combs (Puff Daddy), 1995
    Archival pigment print mounted on dibond, maple frame, museum glass
    Printed in three sizes
  • Dana Lixenberg, Robert Craig Knievel (Evel Knievel), 1997
    Dana Lixenberg
    Robert Craig Knievel (Evel Knievel), 1997
    Archival pigment print mounted on dibond, maple frame, museum glass
    Printed in three sizes
  • Dana Lixenberg, Aaliyah Dana Haughton (Aaliyah), 1995
    Dana Lixenberg
    Aaliyah Dana Haughton (Aaliyah), 1995
    Archival pigment print mounted on dibond, maple frame, museum glass
    Printed in two sizes
  • Dana Lixenberg, Tupac Shakur, 1993
    Dana Lixenberg
    Tupac Shakur, 1993
    Gelatin Silver print mounted on aluminum, walnut frame, museum glass
    Printed in two sizes
  • Dana Lixenberg, Jenny Holzer, 1997
    Dana Lixenberg
    Jenny Holzer, 1997
    Archival pigment print mounted on dibond, maple frame, museum glass
    Printed in two sizes
  • photograph of Leonard Cohen sitting down, looking at the camera
    Dana Lixenberg
    Leonard Cohen, 1995 (II)
    Archival pigment print mounted on dibond, maple frame, museum glass
    Printed in two sizes
Page
 2 
of 11
Biography

Dana Lixenberg is known for her stripped-down portraits that revel in the elemental characteristics of her subjects. She uses a large-format field camera – a cumbersome tool, which necessitates what the artist refers to as a ‘slow dance’ between her and her subjects. The resulting portraits contain an enormous amount of detail and texture, and are as revelatory as a personal encounter. The power of the work arises from its intimacy, compositional rigor and, importantly, the absence of social stereotyping. Lixenberg has been predominantly active in the United States, and her thorough understanding of the country and its society seeps through palpably in her work. 

Besides her extensive editorial practice, for which she photographed many cultural icons, she pursues long-term projects with a primary focus on marginalized communities. These projects include Jeffersonville, Indiana (2005), a collection of landscapes and portraits of a small town’s homeless population and The Last Days of Shishmaref (2008), which portrays an Inupiaq community on an eroding island off the coast of Alaska. Lixenberg’s most extensive body of work to date is Imperial Courts, 1993-2015 (2015), which she begun in the aftermath of the 1992 Rodney King riots. Spanning 22 years, the project tracks the changing shape of an underserved community in Watts, Los Angeles. In contrast to the often one dimensional, sensationalized media coverage of this neighborhood, Lixenberg employs a more subdued and collaborative photographic approach. Like her other projects, Imperial Courts consists of a series of photographs and a publication. Exploring other media for the first time, Lixenberg also included audio recordings and created a three-channel video installation. The project was awarded the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize in 2017 and continues to be exhibited internationally.

Dana Lixenberg lives and works in Amsterdam (NL) and New York, NY (US). She studied photography at the London College of Printing (UK) from 1984 to 1986, and at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam (NL) from 1987 until 1989. Her work is collected widely and has been exhibited at institutions such as Aperture Foundation, New York, NY (US); Mai Manó Ház, Budapest (HU); Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (NL); Centre Photographique, Rouen (FR); MMK, Frankfurt am Main (DE); The Photographers’ Gallery, London (UK); Busan Biennale (KR); Huis Marseille, Amsterdam (NL); LACP, Los Angeles, CA (US); Fotomuseum, The Hague (NL) and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL).

Exhibitions
Press