Natacha Merritt

Who is Natacha Merritt?

Natacha Merritt is an American photographer, artist and biologist. Her 2000 book Digital Diaries was published by Taschen and was the first digital photography book ever published. About her work, Rolling Stone wrote "Her eerily intimate depictions of fucking and sucking transcend smut. Even literate smut.” Merritt has been called a cheap self-promoter, a ground-breaker, and the contemporary counterpart of Anaïs Nin. She cataloged her sexual history on the internet through explicit photographs and drew the attention of photographer Eric Kroll, leading to the release of her photos as Digital Diaries.

Merritt was a guest speaker at the Ars Electronica Festival in Austria and in Melbourne at the AGIdeas 2002 conference. In 2003 she was one of the creators of Zumanity for Cirque du Soleil. In 2008 she sold the rights for an Insect Circus to Cirque du Soleil. The show became Ovo.

Merritt has been compared to Cindy Sherman and Claude Cahun in how she has broken photographic ground in self-portraiture by redefining the boundaries of artistic photography. Her work has been described as "a distinct female voice that takes candid self-revelation to new heights of wonderful indecency".