SARA BENNETT, a 2024 Guggenheim fellow, is a former public defender who primarily photographs women with life sentences, both inside and outside prison, as a way to draw attention to the problems of mass incarceration. Her work has been widely exhibited in museums and galleries, including group shows at Blanton Museum of Art’s Day Jobs, MoMA PS1’s Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration and the Museum of the City of New York’s New York Now: Home, and at solo shows including the Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon, Photoville in Brooklyn, New York, and Rotterdam Photo 2023. Her work is in the collection of, among others, the John Hays Library at Brown University and the Museum of the City of New York, and has been featured in such publications as The New York Times, The New Yorker Photo Booth, and Variety & Rolling Stone’s American (In)Justice. She is the 2023 Emerging Laureate of the International Women in Photo Association.

She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Awards and Exhibitions (selected)

Guggenheim Fellowship (Photography) 2024

Finalist for consideration for a permanent public art commission, New York City (2023)

Emergent Laureate Award, International Women in Photo Association (2023)

The Capa Space, Yorktown Heights, New York, (solo show) (2024)

Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA (3 prints in Day Jobs (2024)

Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas, 4 prints in Day Jobs (2023)

Museum of the City of New York, 4 prints in New York Now: Home (2023)

Solo container exhibition at Rotterdam Photo 2023.

MoMA PS1, 6 prints in the Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration exhibition (2020)

The Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, OR (solo show) (2020)

Solo container exhibition at Photoville 2018 and Photoville 2019, Brooklyn, NY

The FENCE 2018, Category Home, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Boston, Atlanta, Denver, Durham, Santa Fe, Calgary, Sarasota, Houston

Capture Your Freedom, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, Roosevelt Island, New York City (jury prize winner for the category, Freedom from Fear) (2018)

The Davis Orton Gallery, Hudson, NY (solo show) (2019)

STILL HERE: Six Women, Sundance (solo show) (2020)

Photo Vogue Italia 2021, Reframing History

Open Wall Arles, Daily Life Singles category (2 images) (2020)

Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery, “Fermata 3 on 3” (2020)

Critics’ Choice Top 10, LensCulture Critics’ Choice 2020

Finalist, 2020 CDS Documentary Essay Prize in Photography

Shortlisted, 2023, 2022 & 2020 Blow Up Press Book Award

Top 50 Finalist, 2018 Critical Mass Competition and 2019 Critical Mass Competition

13th National Juried Exhibition, CERES Gallery, New York City (second place) (2018)

10th International Organ Vida Photography Festival, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb Croatia (2018)

Indian Photography Festival 2018 Hyderabad (2018)

Shortlisted, Sienna International Photo Awards (2022)

Shortlisted, Athens Photo Festival (2019 and 2020)

One of 18 books chosen in the First Annual Photobook Juried Exhibition, Click! Photography Festival (2018)

INFOCUS Juried Exhibition of Self-Published Books at the Phoenix Art Museum (2014)

Acquisitions

The John Hay Library, Brown University. Three images from the series, Life After Life in Prison: The Bedroom Project (Aisha) (Jennifer) (Karen) and three images from the series, Looking Inside: Portraits of Women Serving Life Sentences (Assia) (Gloria) (Sahiah)

Museum of the City of New York, New York City (4 prints from The Bedroom Project)

The Pardon Office, Department of Justice. Looking Inside: Portraits of Women Serving Life Sentences is on long-term loan.

Talks, Podcasts, and TV

B&S With Friends, Episode 31: Sara Bennett and Mark Loughney, May 2024

Photographing Incarceration Part 1 for Zeke Magazine, October 2023

The Freedom Exchange Project, June 2022

Artist Talk commissioned by Photoville in conjunction with PhotoWings (2020)

Chosen Family: Marking Time Artist Talk with Mary Baxter, Karen, and Leah (2021)

One-minuted video created for A Yellow Rose Project (2021)

Unjust and Unsolved, Episode 20 with Sara Bennett, January 2021

“Photography Wins! Sara Bennett and Joseph Holmes,” B&H Photography Podcast, January 2020

Ken Weingart: Interview with Sara Bennett (2021)

Photos and Parole, video by Trinity Wall Street, September 18, 2018

Eldridge & Co: Sara Bennett, photographer, CUNY TV, October 23, 2019

Eldridge & Co: Sara Bennett, photographer, and Karen Ely, former inmate, CUNY TV, March 21, 2018

Eldridge & Co: Sara Bennett’s “Life After Life in Prison.” CUNY TV, September 16, 2015

Publications

Naomi Toth, “Transformer les murs en ponts : art, empathie et incarcération de masse aux États-Unis” (Par-delà l’innocence et la culpabilité: Sara Bennett) in Hybride, 2024

Reimagining Re-Entry Public Philosophy Group: “Released from Prison?”, in The Philosopher, Vol. 112, no. 1, 2024

Incarceration Issue, Zeke Magazine, Fall 2023

Variety & Rolling Stone’s “American (In)Justice” (2019)

The Journal of Women and Criminal Justice, NJ Reentry Corporation (2021) (20 images from Looking Inside)

Harvard Kennedy School Journal of African American Policy (2021) (5 images from Looking Inside)

Synapsis: A Health Humanities Journal (2021) (5 images from Looking Inside)

“Losses Not to Be Passed On: Paula C. Johnson and Sara Bennett’s Portraits Rewriting (Ex-) Incarcerated Black Mothers,” in Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation, Eds. Lesly Deschler Canossi/Zoraida Lopez-Diago. Leuven: Leuven University Press (2022)

Harvard Kennedy School Journal of African American Policy (2018-2019) (8 images from The Bedroom Project)

A Women’s Thing, (Fall 2017)(excerpts from Life After Life in Prison)