Carolyn Sherer was born in the South in 1957. Her military family traveled extensively, allowing her the perspective of the intimate insider, as well as that of a distant outside visitor.

Sherer is interested in issues of identity, and as she is creating images of people, she intuitively selects those quiet authentic photographic moments that fuse the personal with the universal. Working in series, she has explored archetypal images of Southern adolescents (Junior Matriarchs of the South), portraits of people with disabilities and chronic illness as tools for social advocacy (Just As I Am: Portraits of Americans with Disabilities and Positively Living: Portraits of People with HIV), and narratives informed by Old Master paintings (Living Color). Her current series is the most personal to date, addressing the state of her lesbian community in Birmingham, Alabama (Living in Limbo: Lesbian Families in the Deep South). Although motivated by a need to document moments before they disappear, her work is informed by things past, popular culture, and current artists.

Her fine art photographs have been featured in numerous museum exhibitions of photography and contemporary art including those at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (solo, 1995), Birmingham Museum of Art (1996, 2007), Wiregrass Museum of Art (2006), and Red Clay Survey at Huntsville Museum of Art (2005, 2007, 2012). Her work is represented in private, corporate, and public collections. A book of her images, Just As I Am Americans with Disabilities, with text by Ellen Dossett, won a first place IPPY (National Independent Book Publishers Award), and the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award from Boston University. Photographs from the book also received awards from the World Health Organization and were included in European photography exhibitions sponsored by the group. Sherer has twice received the Alabama State Council for the Arts Individual Fellowship. Internationally, she was invited for a series of conferences/cultural exchanges in multiple Japanese cities as the guest of Tanpopo-No-Ye and The International Society for the Arts in Healthcare. Carolyn is represented by Jennifer Hunt Gallery, jhunt@jenniferhuntgallery.com

Additional information about the artist may be found on her website: www.carolynsherer.com