Tyler Shields is both extremely talented and a genius at not giving a f**k about what others think. Here are some interesting things you might not know about this remarkable “bad boy” of photography.
He once collected blood from 20 celebrities to make a piece of art for his Life Is Not a Fairytale exhibit in Los Angeles (and also photographed Lindsay Lohan as a vampire).
Tyler did a series where he destroyed things to see just how well they were made. Like the Birkin bag he set on fire (before he used chainsaw, but it seems that wasn’t enough)
He was a professional inline skater. He participated in the 1999 and 2000 X Games and toured with Tony Hawk in 2003
Shields is also into film-making: in 2015, he directed the action thriller film Final Girl which starred Abigail Breslin.
He has written two books of photography: “The Dirty Side of Glamour” (November, 2013) and “Provocateur” (published Fall 2016).
In his series “The Dirty Side of Glamour” the photographer wanted to take people to “the craziest, dirtiest places”.
His series “Historical Fiction” covers events such as the deaths of James Dean, John F Kennedy, Dr Martin Luther King and Marilyn Monroe, the first men on the moon and the break up of The Beatles.
Shields was criticised for a photoshoot with Glee star Heather Morris with a bruised eye as making light of abusive treatment of women. The photographer apologised after receiving death threats, saying, “If you are anti-domestic abuse spread the word about it. Threatening to kill me is not going to help anything”.
