Sheila Metzner

Sheila Metzner (born 1939) is an American photographer whose pioneering work spans fine art, fashion, portraiture, still life, and landscape. Raised in Brooklyn, she studied Visual Communications at Pratt Institute before joining Doyle Dane Bernbach as its first female art director. Over the next thirteen years, she balanced a growing family—raising five children—with quietly building a personal archive of images that would later define her artisanal, painterly approach to color photography.

Metzner’s breakthrough came in 1978, when one of her early color images was featured in the Museum of Modern Art’s landmark exhibition Mirrors and Windows: American Photography since 1960. The photograph emerged as an unexpected standout, opening doors to gallery shows and commercial commissions. Known for her subtle use of light, textured surfaces, and dream‑like compositions, her work brings an intimate, almost cinematic quality to ordinary objects and landscapes.

Throughout her career, Metzner has published four monographs—Objects of Desire (winner of the ASMP Ansel Adams Award for Book Photography), Sheila Metzner’s Color, Inherit the Earth, and Form and Fashion—and her images are held in major collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the International Center of Photography, and the Polaroid and Agfa archives. Her enduring influence lies in her fusion of editorial discipline with fine‑art sensitivity, inspiring photographers to see the world through a lens of poetic observation.