Perfectible Worlds
September 6 – 30, 2007
Sohier’s Perfectible Worlds is about people’s private passions and obsessions. Begun soon after 9/11/01, the series portrays people transported into worlds and activities over which they have near-total control. The photographs, made from medium-format negatives, range from portraits of some who make extravagant miniature worlds, to others who have extraordinary collections or who immerse themselves in unusual pursuits. Each photograph is the discovery of a particular world an individual has found or created for himself — a private world that few are privileged to see.
Sage Sohier (American, b. 1954, she/her/hers) has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the No Strings Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation.
She has published eight monographs, including Passing Time, (Nazraeli Press 2023), Peaceable Kingdom, (Kehrer Verlag 2021) Animals, (Stanley/Barker 2019), Americans Seen, (Nazraeli Press 2017), Witness to Beauty, (Kehrer Verlag 2017), At Home with Themselves: Same-Sex Couples in 1980s America, (Spotted Books 2014), About Face, (Columbia College Chicago Press 2012), and Perfectible Worlds, (Photolucida 2007).
She has had solo shows at Foley Gallery in New York, Robert Klein Gallery in Boston, Carroll and Sons Gallery in Boston, Joseph Bellows Gallery in San Diego, The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, and Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, OR. Her work has been included in group shows at the Museum of Modern Art, NY, Fotografiska in Stockholm, the International Center of Photography, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and many other venues.
Sohier’s work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, the Davis Museum, Wellesley College, and the Brooklyn Museum, to name a few.
She has taught photography at Harvard University, Wellesley College, and the Massachusetts College of Art, and has done commissioned work for the George Gund Foundation in Cleveland, the Robert Rauschenberg Residency program in Captiva, FL, and the Photographic Resource Center in Boston, as well as editorial work for numerous publications.
She is represented by Robert Klein Gallery in Boston, and Joseph Bellows Gallery in CA.