Sam Taylor-Johnson

Sam Taylor-Johnson, born in London in 1967, is an internationally recognised British artist and film director who emerged as part of the YBA group.

Taylor-Johnson’s fine art practice interrogates ideas of interior and exterior identity, her own included. Her photography and video work allows for minute consideration of what defines our sense of self. In 2004 the National Portrait Gallery commissioned Taylor-Johnson to make a video portrait of David Beckham, whom she depicted sleeping. The portrayal of a public individual in a private act is a key example of Taylor-Johnson’s concerns as an artist.

In 1998 she was nominated for the Turner Prize having won, the previous year, the Illy Café Prize for Most Promising Young Artist at the Venice Biennale (1997). In the 2011 Birthday Honours she was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to the Arts.

Taylor-Johnson has received global praise for her work as the director of films including ’50 Shades of Grey’, which marked the biggest opening for a female director in history and ‘Back to Black’ the biographical drama released in 2024, based on the life of Amy Winehouse.

Sam Taylor-Johnson is represented by Galleria Lorcan O’Neill Roma.