Under the Skin: The Photographs of Pat York

Under the Skin:
The Photographs of Pat York

Pat York is a highly regarded fine art photographer. Her work has been shown in museums and galleries around the world, including solo exhibitions at the Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Russian State Museum, St. Petersburg; the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts; the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills; and many more.

York began her career as a journalist for Vogue and then became the Photographic/Travel Editor at Glamour. In this capacity York photographed prominent film, theater, and literary personalities, including, most fortuitously, a young actor she would go on to marry, Michael York. She then embarked on a book project, Going Strong, to photograph individuals aged 75 and older who were still working full time.

The intensity of Pat York’s intellectual inquiry has brought her to a deep and multi-faceted study of exactly what it means to be a human being, photographing the dissection of cadavers at the same time she made a series of photographs depicting people in their workplace completely nude. York has melded these three categories of photographic endeavor into a unique body of work, one that begins with the face we all hope to present to the world and then continually strips away surface appearances until she arrives at the most basic of truths - that we are all alike in our most fundamental essence. York finds an incredible beauty in the process of photographing cadavers and feels a great privilege in being given access to do so.