Neal Slavin

Staff of New York Public Library, Main Reading Room, New York City

1974

Neal Slavin, a native New Yorker, began photographing groups in 1972. He quickly realized that shooting in color yielded greater nuance and detail, placing him among the first generation of photographers, along with William Eggleston and Joel Meyerowitz, to fully embrace color photography.

Over the past four decades, Slavin has recorded hundreds of groups from the most obscure to the most celebrated, both in the United States and abroad: Sabrett Hot Dog vendors, NYC; the Silurian Border Morris Men, Herefordshire; the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Salt Lake City; Elephant Keepers with Katie and Kumara, Bedfordshire; and the Mahayana Buddhist Service, NYC.

He has published three books: Portugal (Lustrum Press, 1971), When Two or More Are Gathered Together (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1974); and Britons (Aperture, 1986). His prints have been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the International Center of Photography (ICP), New York; the National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; the National Media Museum, London; and the John Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, among many others.

Find original Neal Slavin photography on 1stDibs.

(Biography provided by Laurence Miller Gallery)