Katie Murray is a New York–based photographer and video artist whose work explores the mysterious nature of familiarity and the ambiguity of memory, existing between the mythic and the mundane. Working primarily in lens-based media, Murray is known for creating images that reveal the psychological intensity of everyday American life. Her photographs and videos often depict domestic spaces, ritualized gestures, and charged emotional atmospheres—inviting viewers into scenes that are as intimate as they are uncanny.

Murray received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts and her MFA from the Yale University School of Art. Over the past two decades, she has built a body of work that is notable for its rich narrative undertones and its attention to the subtle performances of identity, gender, and history. Drawing on both documentary and constructed image-making traditions, Murray’s photographs often blur the boundaries between fact and fiction, personal and collective memory.

Her monograph All the Queens Men, published by Daylight Books in 2013, explores masculinity, myth, and performance in working-class and domestic settings. The book was praised for its nuanced portrayal of American men seen through a lens that is both tender and interrogative. In 2018, ASMR4 published Ordinary Matter, an artist book that extends Murray’s interest in the poetic fragments of everyday life. Through this publication, she continued her investigation of how time, vulnerability, and repetition shape our visual and emotional landscapes.

Murray’s work has been widely exhibited nationally and internationally. Selected solo and group exhibitions include the 18th Jeonju International Photo Festival (2025), The Rockaway Hotel (2023), Fish Island Gallery, NY (2022), TOPS Gallery, Memphis, TN (2017), European Capital of Culture – Wroclaw (2016), Athens Photo Festival, Greece (2016), The Barbara Walters Gallery at Sarah Lawrence College (2014), The Photographers’ Gallery, London (2013), College of the Canyons Art Gallery (2012), HomeFront Gallery, NY (2011), World Class Boxing, Miami (2010), Kate Werble Gallery, NY (2009), the International Center for Photography (2008), White Columns, NY (2004), Jen Bekman Gallery (2004), the Queens Museum of Art, NY (2004), and The Yale University Art Gallery (2000).

Her work is included in the permanent collections of institutions such as the Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL; The Museum of the City of New York, NY; The Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; and the Museum of Modern Art Library Collection, NY. She has received numerous grants and awards including the New York State Residents Grant for Excellence in Photography, the Robin Forbes Memorial Award in Photography, and the Barry Cohen Award for Excellence in Art. She was also nominated for the Anonymous Was a Woman Award.

Murray’s photographs have been featured in a range of publications and editorial platforms including Dear Dave Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Fortune Magazine, and VICE Magazine. Her visual language—marked by a quiet drama and layered symbolism—translates seamlessly between the book form, the gallery wall, and time-based media.

In addition to her own artistic practice, Murray is deeply committed to education and the photographic community. She has curated several group exhibitions including Housed at the Alice Austen House (2010), On the Waterfront at 583 Gallery in Brooklyn, NY (2016), and Photography Is at the Maass Gallery, Purchase College (2024). She is also a contributing member of ASMR4, a small press and publishing project.

Murray has taught at institutions such as New York University, Sarah Lawrence College, the School of Visual Arts, the International Center of Photography, Hunter College, and Princeton University. She is currently Chair of the Photography Program at Purchase College, where she guides undergraduate and graduate students in exploring the critical, material, and conceptual dimensions of lens-based art.

Across all aspects of her work Katie Murray remains committed to exploring the intimate and layered nature of how we see, remember, and make meaning. Her photographs ask us to consider not only what we are looking at, but how we are looking—and what lies beneath the surface of the familiar.

917-304-4369

k8tiemurray@gmail.com and katie.murray@purchase.edu