Biography

Sandy Gray studied dance and theater at California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles and has had an extensive career in film and television. Gray’s relationship with photography began over 30 years ago while working as a print model. She has been photographed for major advertising campaigns by such greats as Peter Lindbergh, Peggy Sirota and Elliot Erwitt. While modeling in New York, she got behind the camera, aiming for a different perspective.

During her studies at The International Center of Photography, the response to Gray’s street photographs encouraged her to make a trip to Cuba to photograph the 40th Anniversary of the Revolution. The photos resulted in her first solo exhibition held at El Taller Latino Americano in New York City titled, “Cuba, El Primero de Enero’’, images of a country during the Special Period. Her Cuba photos were also included in “the New Toltecas en Aztlan” exhibit at Centro Cultural de la Raza in Balboa Park, San Diego. Gray is a collaborator on an underwater photography book project, “La Sirena” in which she was photographed free-diving in open ocean - exploring the myth of the mermaid.

Gray’s current focus is an ongoing self-portrait series, exploring gender, aging, and female archetypes and stereotypes - themes which sprung from her desire to explore aspects of herself that are often eclipsed by the imposed model/actor persona. Of her self-portraits Gray says, “for most of my life I have been the object of the gaze and projections of others - first as a child actor/dancer and later as a model. I am fascinated and disturbed by the chasm that lies between how others see us and how we see ourselves”.

Two of Gray’s self-portrait images were included in the group exhibition, “Fuck Pretty”, at the Robert Berman Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. Discovered by curator Angela Featherstone, newcomer Gray was thrilled to have her photos exhibited next to those by Susan Meiselas, Catherine Opie and other established artists.

In her art ltd. review of the show, Shana Nys Dambrot wrote, “An intuitive sensibility links aging female bodies and run-down playgrounds in a spiral of decrepit spectacle that is both bitter and sweet; Sandy Gray’s Showgirl, Las Vegas, Nevada comes closest to fusing this iconography into a single frame”.

In February 2023 two of Gray’s self-portraits, were awarded honorable mentions in the reFocus awards Black and White Photography contest. She also had two images included in the Robert Berman Gallery exhibit, “Focus on Women in Photography” February 14 - March 14, 2023.