Elizabeth Heyert is an American photographer known for experimental portrait projects. Unlike most portrait photographers, Heyert works from the outside as an observer rather than a director. She has photographed people sleeping for hours in her studio while they were transformed by their subconscious dreams; and people lost in hypnotic trances as they acted out an internal private fantasy. In her most well-known series, THE TRAVELERS, she shot formal portraits post-mortem, leaving it to the viewer to imagine the complex history of each departed life. Often using analog techniques from the 19th and 20th centuries to transform these intimate portraits into an expressive vision, she allows us to witness, without judgement or manipulation, pure and essential aspects of our shared humanity. 

Her latest project, THE UNBORN, a series of nine pre-natal portraits, was created as a bookend to her postmortem photographs to explore the mystery of what we are like before we enter the world. THE UNBORN will be on view during the 2026 Venice Art Biennale in Personal Structures/Confluences from May-November.

Heyert's photographs are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Beinecke Library of Rare Books and Manuscripts at Yale University, and other museums and private collections. Her photography books include THE TRAVELERS (Scalo), the award-winning book from her series; THE OUTSIDER (Damiani) a conceptual portrait project shot in China; THE SLEEPERS (Sei Swann); THE NARCISSISTS (Silvana); METROPOLITAN PLACES (Viking Studio), a classic anthology of 20th century design which she wrote and photographed; and THE GLASS-HOUSE YEARS (Allanheld & Schram), a history of 19th century portrait photography.

Heyert graduated from the Royal College of Art, London. A native New Yorker, she lives in Greenwich Village, and has a studio in the Chelsea arts district.