Self-Portrait As Golden (Death Valley CA) is a c-print produced as a Printed Matter Fundraising Edition to support the 2013 LA Art Book Fair. The print depicts a naked Sherry standing in a cavernous Death Valley Landscape. The image was originally produced for David Benjamin Sherry’s first book, It’s Time, published by Damiani in 2009, in which saturated landscapes and still lives depict humans as inseparable from the landscapes surrounding them. The expansive landscape dwarfs the artist, yet the gold paint on his skin refuses to render the figure overshadowed. The tension between the tiny, metallic figure and the monstrous landscape evokes a larger question of the relationship between person and place and their interconnectedness.

David Benjamin Sherry (b. 1981 in Stony Brook, New York) is a photographer known for his vibrant analog portraits of the American Southwest landscape, which are often bathed in vibrant hues. His work centers around his thorough darkroom process, which allows him to ignite classic landscape photos with a rainbow of colors, highlighting the emotive quality of the work. Sherry lives and works in Los Angeles, California. His work has been featured at MoMA PS1, Aspen Art Museum, LACMA, and New York’s International Center for Photography.