Sarah C. Wilson (b. 1977) Sarah Wilson is a photographer, cinematographer, film producer and member of Go-Valley, the Austin-based film production company she co-founded with her husband, director Keith Maitland. A graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, she balances documentary films and editorial photography assignments with personal and public art projects. Wilson has been on assignment for The New York Times Magazine, Time, People, The Atlantic, Mother Jones,National Geographic Brand Stories and several other publications including Texas Monthly, where she is featured on the masthead. Her photographs are in the permanent collections of the Harry Ransom Center and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and she has received awards at photo festivals in the US and abroad. In 2016 Wilson worked as a cinematographer and executive producer on the shortlisted, animated documentary, TOWER, winner of the Emmy for Best Historical Documentary, as well as a Critics’ Choice Award for Most Innovative Documentary. In 2022, Go-Valley released DEAR MR. BRODY, which Sarah Wilson both lensed and served as a producer. Wilson’s portrait series about an East Texas town in the aftermath of a hate crime, titled Jasper, Texas: The Healing of a Community in Crisis, received multiple grants, toured seven cities in Texas, and showed at the White Box Gallery in New York City. With BLIND PROM, Wilson volunteered as the prom night photographer at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired for ten years. Blind Prom was awarded the PhotoNOLA Review Prize, and showed at New York’s Foley Gallery, the New Orleans Photo Alliance Gallery and at China’s Lishui Photography Festival. In her current photographic series, DIG, Wilson explores her grandfather’s life’s work as a paleontologist, inspiring her own search for fossils and existential perspective in the West Texas desert. Before he died, Wilson’s grandfather gave her three black metal boxes filled with faded Kodachromes, his teaching slides from when he was a professor of geology and paleontology at the University of Texas. The images featured geologic charts, rock formations, bone fragments, skulls, and landscapes from his annual digs in West Texas and Big Bend National Park. Holding them up to the light, Wilson realized that she and her grandfather photographed some of the exact same desert landscapes, from the same vantage points, only fifty years apart. This shared connection ignited an adventure and a long-term project, featured in the pages of her first book, DIG: Notes on Field and Family. Wilson now joins paleontologists on digs every winter in the Big Bend area, searching for bones and photographing the same stark desert landscapes featured in those vintage 35mm transparencies. But her work is not just an homage to her grandfather. She has created conceptual self-portraits in the style of geology and anatomy charts, combining the personal and the scientific. For Wilson, these annual digs are a pilgrimage to an origin story that reaches beyond traceable generations. Each bone collected is evidence of the slow, significant work of evolution, serving as a bracing reminder that we, as humans, sit at the very end of that timeline. Selected Career HighlightsBorn in 19771996 - 2000 BFA, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, New York1997 – 2000 Photographic Internships with Mary Ellen Mark, Robert Clark, and Texas Monthly1999 Studio assistant to photographer James Evans; resides in Marathon, Texas2000 Recipient of Daniel Rosenberg Traveling Fellowship from NYU’s Tisch School2000 Selected Participant of The Eddie Adams Photographic Workshop XIII2000-2004 Grants awarded by the Texas Council for the Humanities, the Trull Foundation, and the Cartwright Foundation for the touring photographic exhibition, Jasper, Texas: The Healing of a Community in Crisis2008 Winner of the 2008 Photo NOLA Review Prize for BLIND PROM2009 Santa Fe Prize for Photography Nominee, CENTER Santa Fe2014 Photo Forum panelist, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX2016 Cinematographer and executive producer on the shortlisted, animated documentary, TOWER, winner of the Emmy for Best Historical Documentary, as well as a Critics’ Choice Award for Most Innovative Documentary 2016 2016 Cinematographer and Producer for A Song for You: The Austin City Limits Story, premiered at SXSW2021 - 2022 Cinematographer and Producer of Dear Mr. Brody - featured at Telluride, Tribeca, Doc 5 , Woodstock, and other film festivals2021 ESSENTIALS public art show, City of Austin ArtResponders Grant recipient 2022 Center for Big Bend Studies Annual Conference featured presenter2023 Publishes DIG: Notes on Field and Family2023 Book Talk, Marfa Agave Festival, Marfa, Texas Selected Exhibitions2024 DIG, Foltz Fine Art, Houston, Texas2023 DIG, Do Right Hall, Marfa, Texas2023 DIG, Charles Moore House, Austin, Texas 2021 ESSENTIALS, public art show, Austin, Texas2016 Journey into the Big Bend, group show, Bullock Texas State History Museum, Austin, TX2009 -2010 BLIND PROM The New Orleans Photo Alliance Gallery, New Orleans, LA, The Lishui International Photography Festival, Lishui, China The Foley Gallery, New York, NY2002 – 2007 Jasper, Texas: The Healing of a Community in Crisis The Galveston Arts Center, Galveston, TX The White Box Gallery, New York, NY The Southwest School of Art and Craft, San Antonio, TX Dallas Public Library, J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, Dallas, TX The Gallery Square, Jasper, TX George Washington Carver Museum, Austin, TX 2000 Marathon, Texas, NYU Thesis Exhibition, Gulf and Western Gallery, New York, NY CollectionsHarry Ransom Center, The University of Texas, Austin, TexasMuseum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas Lishui Photography Museum of China Experience2000 – current Owner of Sarah Wilson Photography, Austin, Texas 2014 – current Go-Valley Films, Co-owner, Cinematographer and Producer 2019 – current Adjunct Photography Professor at The DPP, Austin Community College 2014 – current Artist in Residence, Vertebrate Paleontology Lab, University of Texas