Today we’d like to introduce you to Cheryl Maeder.
Hi Cheryl, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
In my early twenties, I moved to Switzerland. While there, a friend gave me his Nikon camera and that was it, I fell in love with photography. I studied at the Zurich University of the Arts in Zurich, Switzerland and then returned to United States and eventually opened my photography studio in San Francisco, California. After much hard work and perseverance. I photographed for major international advertising and fashion campaigns. As the creative catalyst behind the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, my photography helped to transform the way women are viewed in the global media today.
In 2005, I relocated my studio to the Miami area and immersed myself fully in fine art photography and video art. Through a process of experimentation, I began to develop my own distinctive way of seeing and working.
In 2007, I became represented by Mark Hachem Gallery, which exhibited my work at major art fairs across the United States, Europe, and South America. During this time, my limited-edition photographs were acquired by collectors both nationally and internationally.
My work has since been exhibited across the United States, South America, and Europe, including presentations at the Louvre Museum in Paris and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome. My photographs and video works are held in museum, corporate, and private collections worldwide.
My video artworks are currently installed with Delta Air Lines at JFK in New York, Los Angeles, and Fort Lauderdale airports, as well as in public art platforms internationally. One of my video installations is also part of the healing environment at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, where it is used to support patients through a more calming, restorative visual experience.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It hasn’t been a completely smooth road, more of an evolving one. One of the biggest challenges was transitioning from commercial photography into fine art. In the commercial world, there are clear expectations and structures, whereas in fine art you’re really defining your own language and direction.
There were also moments of uncertainty, trusting a more intuitive process, and allowing the work to unfold without immediate validation. But those periods were essential. They pushed me to refine my voice and stay aligned with what felt meaningful rather than predictable.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I create visual worlds that move through time rather than images that feel fixed within it
For several decades, I’ve worked across photography and video, using elements like water, sky, and landscape as both the material and the stage. Within those environments, I introduce fleeting elements of color, light, and reflection, which are shaped by wind, atmosphere, and time. What’s important to me is that these moments can’t be repeated. Each work comes from a singular event, something that happens once and then disappears.
I’m very influenced by painting, especially color field and ideas of immersion, and I’m interested in that point where an image stops describing a place and becomes its own self-contained world. The landscapes are real, but they begin to feel like they exist slightly outside of time, almost like you’re encountering them between moments.
Time is really central to everything I do. In video, it unfolds slowly through movement and duration. In photography, it’s compressed into a single frame that can feel both fleeting and infinite at the same time. I think of my process as a kind of world-building through time, less about capturing something, and more about allowing something to appear and be experienced.
My work moves between moments, creating spaces where perception slows and reality feels a little less fixed. I’m inviting the viewer not just to look, but to step into something, to experience these worlds as they appear, shift, and disappear, just beyond our reach.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
I think we’re moving from image-making to experience-making.
The boundaries between still image, moving image, and installation are dissolving, so the work becomes less about a single frame and more about perception—something that is felt, not just seen.
At the same time, with AI able to generate technically perfect images, I think there’s a growing shift toward what feels human, intuitive, and unrepeatable. Process, presence, and the conditions of the moment become more important than control or perfection.
I also feel a deeper movement toward reconnecting—with the environment, with stillness, and with a sense of interdependence. Rather than simply representing the world, the work creates a space where viewers can experience that connection directly.
So the shift is both formal and conceptual—the work is becoming more immersive, more durational, and more attuned to the subtle energies that shape how we see and feel.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.maederphotography.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cherylmaeder
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArtistCherylMaeder
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryl-maeder
- Twitter: https://x.com/cherylmaeder
