Gerald Cyrus was born in 1957 in Los Angeles, California and began photographing there in 1984. In 1990 he moved to New York City to pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) which he obtained in 1992. While at SVA, Cyrus interned at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and began work on "Kinship", a project focusing on African-American family life. Throughout the 90's, he also worked on projects documenting Harlem's nightclubs and street life, New York's subways, and black communities around the southern United States. In 2000, Cyrus moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and began photographing in the post-industrial city of Camden, New Jersey, just across the Delaware River. He has also photographed extensively in Bahia, Brazil.
Cyrus has been an artist-in-residence at Light Work in Syracuse, New York and the Sacatar Foundation in Bahia, Brazil. He has also been awarded artist’s fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Pew Foundation.
Cyrus is the author of Stormy Monday: New York’s Uptown Jazz Scene which was published in 2008 and Portrait of Camden in Photographs, 2001-2008 which was published in 2013. He currently lives in Philadelphia, PA and is a member of the historic Kamoinge photographers collective.
