Buck Ellison (born 1987) is an American visual artist, known for his conceptual photography. Through collages, films, and photographs, he interrogates the methods through which whiteness and privilege are sustained and broadcast. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
Early life and education Buck Ellison was born in San Francisco, California, in 1987 and grew up in Marin County. He attended Marin Academy, an independent college-preparatory school in San Rafael. Ellison has said that growing up within one of the wealthiest communities in the United States later became central to his artistic practice, explaining that he "wouldn't be able to make [his] critiques" without having been raised in the social world his photographs examine.
Ellison studied German Literature at Columbia University, graduating in 2010. He then received an MFA degree from the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main in 2014, studying in the class of Willem de Rooij. His fellow students included Anne Imhof, Julien Nguyen, and Evelyn Taocheng Wang.
Career
Ellison's first monograph, Living Trust, won the Paris Photo-Aperture Best PhotoBook Award 2020.
Ellison has been the subject of long-form profiles in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and the Financial Times His work has also been reviewed in Aperture, Artforum, ArtReview, British Journal of Photography, Flash Art, Frieze, L'Uomo Vogue, Mousse, and Texte zur Kunst.
Exhibitions Gag, George Eastman Museum, Rochester, 2026 Genuine Fake Premium Economy, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 2026 (three-person exhibition with filmmaker Jenna Bliss and painter Jasmine Gregory) Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2024–2025 (traveled to Pérez Art Museum Miami and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, 2026) Queer Lens: A History of Photography, The Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2025 Post Scriptum. A Museum Forgotten by Heart, Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, 2024–2025 Burning Down the House: Rethinking Family, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, 2024 Little Brother, Luhring Augustine, New York, 2023 (solo exhibition) Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It's Kept, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2022 16th Biennale de Lyon: manifesto of fragility, Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon, 2022 Made in L.A. 2020: a version, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, Pasadena, 2020 Antarctica, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, 2018 The Sun Placed In The Abyss, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, 2016
Collections Ellison's work is held in the permanent collections of major institutions worldwide, including: Aïshti Foundation, Beirut Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh Hammer Museum, Los Angeles Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Awards and recognition Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Award, first PhotoBook winner (2020)
Bibliography
(monograph)
References
External links