Jeff Sheng
Encyclopedia
Jeff Sheng is a U.S. artist, activist and photographer based in Los Angeles
. He teaches photography and Asian American studies
at the University of California, Santa Barbara
and spent the Fall of 2011 as a visiting professor in the Visual and Environmental Studies program at Harvard University
.
Sheng first became known for his photographic series "Fearless", a series of portraits of athletes on high school and college sports teams who also openly identify
as gay
, lesbian
, bisexual or transgender
. He began photographing the series in 2003, and in 2006, began exhibiting the work at colleges across the United States as part of FearlessCampusTour.org, a self-made endeavor to widely exhibit these photographs in nontraditional art venues such as student centers and collegiate gymnasiums so that large groups of college students could see the activist project and think about the way homophobia adversely affects society, particularly in sports. From 2006-2010, "Fearless" was seen at over forty colleges and high schools across the United States including Yale University
, Columbia University
, Rice University
, the University of Michigan
, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Florida
, Indiana University
, and Dartmouth College
. Other prominent exhibition venues of "Fearless" from 2008-2010 have included the sports media network ESPN
headquarters, the 2009 L.G.B.T. Human Rights Conference in Copenhagen
, Denmark
, the 2010 Winter Olympics
in Vancouver
, Canada, and Nike World Headquarters.
In 2009, Sheng began photographing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", a series of portraits of undisclosed people still serving in the United States military who are affected by the controversial Don't ask, don't tell
policy banning homosexual people from openly serving in the U.S. armed forces. In January 2010, Sheng published the first photography book on the issue, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Volume 1" coincidentally days before President Barack Obama
gave the 2010 State of the Union Address
. The photo series consists of over sixty portraits shot in over 25 U.S. states, and was exhibited at Kaycee Olsen Gallery in September, 2010.
"Revolutions of Memory" is a series of large panoramic digitally constructed images, that deal with history, identity, location and trauma. One of the pieces includes a forty foot wide by six feet high image, taken from the spot and vantage point where the misuranistic hate crime/murder victim Matthew Shepard
was found on a fence post outside Laramie, Wyoming
.
In August 2008, Sheng collaborated with former N.B.A. basket-ball player and fellow activist John Amaechi
in Beijing
, China during the 2008 Summer Olympics
, on a blog in partnership with Amnesty International
. Amaechi utilized Sheng's knowledge of Mandarin and experience in Beijing to get behind the scenes in many situations and to gather candid interviews with local people and Olympic athletes.
Sheng attended Harvard University
and studied under the mentorship of British photographer and Harvard professor Chris Killip
in the Visual and Environmental Studies Department. "Thesis Album", a small photo album consisting of sixty 4" by 6" photographs and half a page of writing, was his summa cum laude undergraduate thesis that Sheng submitted to Harvard in 2002 for his BA
degree. In 2002 and 2003, Sheng interned for gallery owner and art collector Bill Hunt in New York City
, and then briefly assisted for the celebrity/fashion photographer Greg Gorman in Los Angeles. In 2004, he photographed Evan Wolfson
and Mary Bonauto
for The New York Times Magazine
' for an in-depth article written by David J. Garrow about the struggle over the legalization of same-sex marriage
in Massachusetts
and the United States.
Sheng received his Master of Fine Arts
(MFA) in Studio Art from the University of California, Irvine
in 2007.
While at first influenced by the snapshot technique of personal documentary portraiture found in the work of Nan Goldin, Sheng's photography has been noted to have a "distinctively Los Angelean flair - think warm colors, sprays of light and blue skies - and an aesthetic that looks to find beauty in the intimate and personal." Others have also compared his work to Richard Avedon
and Bruce Weber
, and more recently, August Sander
and Rineke Dijkstra
. In the credits for "Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Volume 1", Sheng cites the influence of Larry Sultan
and Josef Koudelka
.
Sheng is currently working on a new project about LGBT teen suicide.
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
. He teaches photography and Asian American studies
Asian American Studies
Asian American Studies is an academic discipline which studies the experience of people of Asian ancestry in America. Closely related to other Ethnic Studies disciplines such as African American Studies, Latino/a Studies, and Native American Studies, Asian American Studies critically examines the...
at the University of California, Santa Barbara
University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...
and spent the Fall of 2011 as a visiting professor in the Visual and Environmental Studies program at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
.
Sheng first became known for his photographic series "Fearless", a series of portraits of athletes on high school and college sports teams who also openly identify
Coming out
Coming out is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity....
as gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
, lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
, bisexual or transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
. He began photographing the series in 2003, and in 2006, began exhibiting the work at colleges across the United States as part of FearlessCampusTour.org, a self-made endeavor to widely exhibit these photographs in nontraditional art venues such as student centers and collegiate gymnasiums so that large groups of college students could see the activist project and think about the way homophobia adversely affects society, particularly in sports. From 2006-2010, "Fearless" was seen at over forty colleges and high schools across the United States including Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, Rice University
Rice University
William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University or Rice, is a private research university located on a heavily wooded campus in Houston, Texas, United States...
, the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Florida
University of Florida
The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...
, Indiana University
Indiana University
Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...
, and Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
. Other prominent exhibition venues of "Fearless" from 2008-2010 have included the sports media network ESPN
ESPN
Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, commonly known as ESPN, is an American global cable television network focusing on sports-related programming including live and pre-taped event telecasts, sports talk shows, and other original programming....
headquarters, the 2009 L.G.B.T. Human Rights Conference in Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, the 2010 Winter Olympics
2010 Winter Olympics
The 2010 Winter Olympics, officially the XXI Olympic Winter Games or the 21st Winter Olympics, were a major international multi-sport event held from February 12–28, 2010, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, with some events held in the suburbs of Richmond, West Vancouver and the University...
in Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, Canada, and Nike World Headquarters.
In 2009, Sheng began photographing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", a series of portraits of undisclosed people still serving in the United States military who are affected by the controversial Don't ask, don't tell
Don't ask, don't tell
"Don't ask, don't tell" was the official United States policy on homosexuals serving in the military from December 21, 1993 to September 20, 2011. The policy prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants, while...
policy banning homosexual people from openly serving in the U.S. armed forces. In January 2010, Sheng published the first photography book on the issue, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Volume 1" coincidentally days before President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
gave the 2010 State of the Union Address
2010 State of the Union Address
The 2010 State of the Union Address was given by United States President Barack Obama on January 27, 2010, to a joint session of Congress. It was aired on all the major networks starting at 9 p.m. ET...
. The photo series consists of over sixty portraits shot in over 25 U.S. states, and was exhibited at Kaycee Olsen Gallery in September, 2010.
"Revolutions of Memory" is a series of large panoramic digitally constructed images, that deal with history, identity, location and trauma. One of the pieces includes a forty foot wide by six feet high image, taken from the spot and vantage point where the misuranistic hate crime/murder victim Matthew Shepard
Matthew Shepard
Matthew Wayne Shepard was a student at the University of Wyoming who was tortured and murdered near Laramie, Wyoming, in October 1998...
was found on a fence post outside Laramie, Wyoming
Laramie, Wyoming
Laramie is a city in and the county seat of Albany County, Wyoming, United States. The population was 30,816 at the . Located on the Laramie River in southeastern Wyoming, the city is west of Cheyenne, at the junction of Interstate 80 and U.S. Route 287....
.
In August 2008, Sheng collaborated with former N.B.A. basket-ball player and fellow activist John Amaechi
John Amaechi
John Uzoma Ekwugha Amaechi OBE is a retired American-born British basketball player who currently works as a psychologist, educator and political activist in Europe and the United States....
in Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
, China during the 2008 Summer Olympics
2008 Summer Olympics
The 2008 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, was a major international multi-sport event that took place in Beijing, China, from August 8 to August 24, 2008. A total of 11,028 athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees competed in 28 sports and 302 events...
, on a blog in partnership with Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
. Amaechi utilized Sheng's knowledge of Mandarin and experience in Beijing to get behind the scenes in many situations and to gather candid interviews with local people and Olympic athletes.
Sheng attended Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
and studied under the mentorship of British photographer and Harvard professor Chris Killip
Chris Killip
Christopher David Killip was born in Douglas, Isle of Man and in 1964 moved to London where he worked as an assistant to the advertising photographer Adrian Flowers. He soon went freelance, but in 1969 stopped his commercial work to concentrate on the photography that he wanted to do. In 1969 he...
in the Visual and Environmental Studies Department. "Thesis Album", a small photo album consisting of sixty 4" by 6" photographs and half a page of writing, was his summa cum laude undergraduate thesis that Sheng submitted to Harvard in 2002 for his BA
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
degree. In 2002 and 2003, Sheng interned for gallery owner and art collector Bill Hunt in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, and then briefly assisted for the celebrity/fashion photographer Greg Gorman in Los Angeles. In 2004, he photographed Evan Wolfson
Evan Wolfson
Evan Wolfson is an American civil rights attorney and advocate. He is founder and executive director of Freedom to Marry, a group favoring same-sex marriage in the United States...
and Mary Bonauto
Mary Bonauto
Mary Bonauto is an American lawyer and civil rights advocate who has worked to eradicate discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. She began working with the Massachusetts-based Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders organization in 1990...
for The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...
' for an in-depth article written by David J. Garrow about the struggle over the legalization of same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage is marriage between two persons of the same biological sex or social gender. Supporters of legal recognition for same-sex marriage typically refer to such recognition as marriage equality....
in Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
and the United States.
Sheng received his Master of Fine Arts
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...
(MFA) in Studio Art from the University of California, Irvine
University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...
in 2007.
While at first influenced by the snapshot technique of personal documentary portraiture found in the work of Nan Goldin, Sheng's photography has been noted to have a "distinctively Los Angelean flair - think warm colors, sprays of light and blue skies - and an aesthetic that looks to find beauty in the intimate and personal." Others have also compared his work to Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon was an American photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century."-Photography career:Avedon was born in New York City to a Jewish Russian...
and Bruce Weber
Bruce Weber (photographer)
Bruce Weber is an American fashion photographer and occasional filmmaker. He is most widely known for his ad campaigns for Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Pirelli, Abercrombie & Fitch, Revlon, and Gianni Versace, as well as his work for Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, Elle, Life, Interview, and Rolling Stone...
, and more recently, August Sander
August Sander
August Sander was a German portrait and documentary photographer. Sander's first book Face of our Time was published in 1929...
and Rineke Dijkstra
Rineke Dijkstra
Rineke Dijkstra is a female Dutch photographer.-Life and work:Dijkstra concentrates on single portraits, and usually works in series, looking at groups such as adolescents, clubbers, and soldiers. Her subjects are often shown standing, facing the camera, against a minimal background...
. In the credits for "Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Volume 1", Sheng cites the influence of Larry Sultan
Larry Sultan
Larry Sultan was an American photographer. His work was recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as multiple grants from the NEA...
and Josef Koudelka
Josef Koudelka
Josef Koudelka is a Czech photographer.-Biography:Josef Koudelka was born in 1938 in Boskovice, Moravia, town of about 10,000 inhabitants. He began photographing his family and the surroundings with a 6 x 6 Bakelite camera...
.
Sheng is currently working on a new project about LGBT teen suicide.