Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders (born February 16, 1952) is an American documentary filmmaker and portrait photographer based in New York City. The majority of his work is shot in large format. Early life. Greenfield-Sanders was born on February 16, 1952, in Miami Beach, Florida, to musician and teacher Ruth W. Greenfield ("née" Wolkowsky) and lawyer Arnold Merwin Greenfield. He graduated from Ransom Everglades School and received a BA in art history from Columbia University in 1974 and a MFA in film from the American Film Institute (A.F.I). Career. Photography. Greenfield-Sanders has photographed well-known figures (Orson  Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton) among many others. 700 of his art world portraits are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He was on the masthead, as a contributing photographer, of "Vanity Fair" from 1990 to 2017. Greenfield-Sanders was initially interested in filmmaking, pursuing a degree at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, where he also took portraits for the school's archive of visiting directors, actors and film stars. "Because of AFI, I got tips from celebrities  as well as access to them," he says. Hitchcock once remarked, "Young man, your lights are all wrong," while Bette Davis criticized him harshly for "shooting from below", according to a Photofocus.com article. Admitting to Davis that he was eager to learn more about portraiture, she invited him to drive her around Hollywood for a week in exchange for her thoughts on photography. Greenfield-Sanders credits Davis with alerting him to the work of George Hurrell and the art of large-format cameras. Greenfield-Sanders makes large-format portraiture. He began his career in 1978 using a vintage 1905 Fulmer  & Schwing view camera with 11"x14" Ektapan black and white film. He made contact prints from the large-format negatives. Today, with that film discontinued, he shoots with a 1930's Deardorff studio camera on 8"x10" Kodak color negative. He shoots only a handful of frames. His work has been exhibited in the United States at The National Portrait Gallery, The Newseum, Brooklyn Museum, High Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and The Annenberg Space for Photography. Film. His first documentary film, "Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart," about the musician Lou Reed, won the 1999 Grammy Award  for Best Long Form Music Video. The film premiered in the U.S. at the Sundance Film Festival and in Europe at the Berlin Film Festival. It aired on the "American Masters" series on PBS. Greenfield-Sanders exhibited "Thinking XXX", a series of clothed and nude portraits of porn stars at the Mary Boone Gallery from October 30 to December 18, 2004. During the photo shoots for the exhibition he directed an HBO documentary, also called "Thinking XXX", about the adult stars. His son in-law Sebastian Blanck worked with him on Thinking XXX, as a composer. On October 15, 2004 , Greenfield-Sanders was profiled on 60 Minutes. Starting in 2008, Greenfield-Sanders directed and produced "The Black List", a series of three documentary films. "Volume 1" premiered at The Sundance Film Festival. All three films aired on HBO. Portraits taken by Greenfield-Sanders for the project were first exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2008, then at Brooklyn Museum, the Hartford Atheneum, and the Paley Center in New York City and Los Angeles. From October 27, 2011, to April 22, 2012, all fifty images from the series were shown at The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.  The Black List won an NAACP Image Award for Best Documentary. In 2010 and 2011, Greenfield-Sanders directed and produced "The Latino List: Volumes 1 & 2." Both films aired on HBO. His portraits from the series were exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the High Museum in Atlanta. In 2012, he completed another film, "About Face: Supermodels Then and Now," an examination of beauty through the eyes and lives of supermodels from the 1950s to the 1980s. This documentary premiered at The Sundance Film Festival and aired on HBO on July 30, 2012. He also directed and produced , "The Out List", which aired on HBO on October 27, 2013, just as the United States Supreme Court ruled on marriage equality. On September 23, 2014, Greenfield-Sanders aired, on PBS' American Masters series, "The Boomer List", which starred well-known persons representing each of the baby boomer years of 1946–1964. His portraits of the 19 subjects were exhibited at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. On September 25, 2015, his film "The Women's List" aired on PBS' American Master series. His portraits of subjects from the documentary along with 35 other images of women, from his archive, were exhibited  through December 31, 2015, at the Hearst Tower Alexey Brodovitch Gallery. In 2016, Greenfield-Sanders directed and produced, "The Trans List." Trans journalist and author, Janet Mock, conducted the interviews. The film received grants from The Ford Foundation, The Arcus Foundation and The Annenberg Foundation. Among the eleven subjects were Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox. It aired December 5, 2016, on HBO. In addition to the documentary, Greenfield-Sanders photographed 29 other trans subjects to include in his "list" survey exhibition at the Annenberg Space for Photography. This exhibition was the first time that all 151 portraits from the Black , Latino, Out, Women's and Trans 'list' projects were presented together. On December 4, 2016, Greenfield-Sanders was profiled on CBS Sunday Morning by Serena Altschul. Greenfield-Sanders' latest film, "", premiered on January 27, 2019, at the Sundance Film Festival. The film explores the extraordinary life and artistry of Toni Morrison, the legendary Nobel laureate. Interviewees include Morrison, Hilton Als, Angela Davis, Fran Lebowitz, Walter Mosley, Sonia Sanchez, and Oprah Winfrey, among others. Awards. Greenfield-Sanders won a Grammy Award for his film, "Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart" and an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Documentary, "The Black List : Volume 1." His film, "Supermodels Then and Now" won the 2012 Women's Image Network Awards for best documentary. On October 29, 2015, he received the Pratt Institute Legend Award at a ceremony in New York. It was presented by filmmaker, Darren Aronofsky. His 2016 documentary, "The Trans List" was nominated for a GLAAD media award for best documentary. On May 19, 2017, Greenfield-Sanders received the Ransom Everglades Founder's Alumni Award for Distinguished Service to the Community. "Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am" won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Documentary in 2019 and in 2020 was nominated  for three Emmy Awards for Best Arts & Culture Documentary, Best Research and Best Music. Personal life. He is married to lawyer, Karin Greenfield-Sanders (née Sanders). They have two children, painter Isca Greenfield-Sanders and filmmaker, Liliana Greenfield-Sanders.