Artist Talk with Cheryl Miller

Cheryl Miller is a self-taught photographer & former city and regional planner. Her practice

exists to create images of African Americans viewed through a kaleidoscope of everyday

experiences. Her focus is on the rich visual development of communities, neighborhoods

& people that make them thrive.

Her 40 year film archive explores resistance and resilience as survivors of the Middle

Passage, honoring our ancestors as witnesses, recipients of the gifts of strength,

resilience, promise, and hope. Ancestor reverence helps to maintain our joy and channels

these gifts. These images are of rites, rituals and social norms, resistance to enslavement,

institutional racism and white supremacy.

Miller’s work has been exhibited in local, national and international art institutions, and is

in the permanent collections of Brooklyn Museum, Schomburg Center for Black Culture

and Research, and the Museum of the City of New York.

In addition, she was an Adjunct Lecturer at The Tisch Department of Photography and

Imaging at NYU. She also taught photography in the NYC Department of Education. As an

active member of the local art community, Miller has sat on the Board of Directors of the

Queens Council on the Arts and The Cultural Collaborative of Jamaica.

She was also ShowUp’s (formally Beacon Gallery in Boston) 2023 Artist In Residence, the

recipient of 2023 Mass Cultural Recovery Grant and awarded the 2023 La Luz Workshop

Scholarship -Publish Your Photography Book. Miller is a 2024 Light Work Artist In

Residence recipient. Her images were featured in New York’s Photoville Festival 2024 in a

solo exhibition, entitled If We Stand Tall…Recollections of Spirits Past. Miller ‘s work has

been selected for the 2025 Collective Exhibition of the 6th Chelsea International

Photography Competition at Agora Gallery in New York City.

Currently, Miller is working on her book project, If We Stand Tall…Recollections of Spirits

Past, which was recently nominated for a Star Photobook Dummy Award.

Host or Publisher Leica Camera