Tierney Gearon was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1963. She studied ballet at the University of Utah, where a scout from a European modeling agency discovered her. She spent the next five years modeling and traveling the world. During this time she took up photography. A Paris agent saw some of her Polaroid photos and encouraged her to do more work. With no formal training, she became a fashion photographer, producing images for magazines, newspapers and advertising campaigns. Gearon’s fashion spreads for W, The New York Times, and Vogue, have had a characteristically strong narrative content. She has also photographed campaigns for Apple, Tod’s, Perry Ellis and Tory Burch, among many others.
Her personal projects, including The Mother Project were the subject of a 2006 documentary film by directors Jack Youngelson and Peter Sutherland, which aired on the Sundance Channel. In the same year, her book Daddy, Where Are You? presented a selection of photographs from the series with an introduction by Charlotte Cotton and essay by Susan M. Kirschbaum (Steidl Publishers, 2006). Tierney released her Explosure series in 2009 and continues to use the process throughout her work. Currently she’s working on a series of five children’s books and having a blast doing so!
Tierney Gearon lives and works in Los Angeles.
