Cheryl Dunn


Cheryl Dunn is a documentary filmmaker and photographer who was born in New Jersey, USA.

Career and work

Dunn graduated from Rutgers University with a BFA in art history. After moving to New York City in the mid 1980s, she spent a large part of her career documenting city streets and the people who strive to leave their mark there: graffiti writers, artists, skaters, boxers, bikers, protesters, and assorted characters. In the late 1990s she began to focus on filmmaking, creating classic films about artists of her generation who have influenced the realities of urban life through their own work.
Her films have played at numerous film festivals including, Tribeca, Edinburgh, Rotterdam, Hotdocs, Los Angeles, Havana, and on PBS.
Dunn's work has been exhibited in various galleries and museums including The Tate Modern in London, Deitch Projects in New York, and the "Art in the Streets "exhibition at the Geffen Contemporary MOCA.
She was one of the subjects in the documentary, book, and traveling museum exhibition Beautiful Losers.
She has had three books of her photographs published: Bicycle Gangs of New York, and Some Kinda Vocation, and Festivals are Good.
Her documentary film Everybody Street about photographers who have used New York City streets as a major subject in their work, world-premiered at Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto in spring 2013. The film includes photographers Bruce Davidson, Jill Freedman, Joel Meyerowitz, Bruce Gilden, Mary Ellen Mark, Jamel Shabazz, Ricky Powell, Martha Cooper, Elliot Erwitt, Rebecca Lepkoff, Boogie, Clayton Patterson, Jeff Mermelstein with Max Kozloff and Luc Sante.

Filmography