“Through photography and related processes, I explore questions of identity, mortality, and human connection. Working across digital and analog processes—from cyanotypes and tintypes to drawing and bookmaking—my work layers image and process to mirror the complexity of lived experience. The Empowered Artist Award allows me to expand these explorations and develop new directions in my practice.”

Shari Diamond is a queer American feminist photographic artist and educator whose work explores borders, sexuality, gender, mortality, impermanence, and human connection. Through photography and digital processes, they investigate what intrigues or unsettles them, using process itself as a form of inquiry. Their work remains rooted in photo-based practice while moving fluidly between analog and digital methods.

Born in Miami Beach, Diamond earned an M.A. in Photography from New York University/International Center of Photography. Their recent project Time Passes is in the collection of the Griffin Museum of Photography. Exhibitions include the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, Leslie-Lohman Museum, Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, Holland Tunnel Newburgh, and the touring Art After Stonewall. Their photographs have appeared in the television show Succession and Dietland.

Diamond’s work is featured in Queer Holdings, Art After Stonewall, 1969–1989, Women Artists’ Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century, and Forbidden Subjects. Collections include the Leslie-Lohman Museum, The New School Archives, and private holdings.

A two-time NYSCA/NYFA Fellow, Diamond has held residencies at Blue Mountain Center, Saltonstall, and the Millay Colony. They are an active member of the Women Photographers Collective of the Hudson.