Biography
Tanya Marcuse (born 1964) is an American photographer known for her large-scale photographs that explore the imperiled natural world. She employs fantastical imagery and elaborate methods of construction to explore cycles of growth and decay and the dynamic tension between the passage of time and the photographic medium.
Marcuse began making photographs as student at Bard College at Simon’s Rock before studying art history and studio art at Oberlin College. She earned her MFA from Yale University.
Her work is held in public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Denver Art Museum, the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven. Marcuse is the recipient of numerous honors, including a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Peter S. Reed Grant, an American Scandinavian Fellowship, two MacDowell Fellowships and is currently a 2025–26 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow. Her published books include Undergarments and Armor (2005), Wax Bodies (2012), Fruitless | Fallen | Woven (2019), Ink (2021), and Portent (2024).
She is a dedicated student of martial arts and boxing as methods of cultivating mental and physical concentration and discipline. Marcuse teaches photography at Bard College in the Hudson Valley, New York, where she lives.
