The family snapshots of Tierney Gearon came to the attention of the art world through her significant presence in the "I Am A Camera" exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London in the spring of 2001, but her work had a strength and conviction that belied her newcomer status.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1962, Tierney was raised in an affluent and conservative home. Her career was kick-started when she was spotted by a European modeling agency while studying ballet in Utah. It was during half a decade of traveling the world through her modeling work that Tierney first became interested in life on the other side of the camera. An agent in Paris, impressed by a small scrapbook of Polaroids Tierney had taken of other models she worked with, encouraged her to extend her repertoire and she was launched into the world of fashion photography, earning respect from many of the most influential fashion houses and producing work for Times Square billboards and publications such as W the The New York Times Magazine.

After five years of jet-setting as a busy commercial photographer, Tierney felt the fashion world had taught her everything it could. She met and married a Frenchman (whom she has since divorced) and settled down for the first time to raise a family, having two children, Emilee and Michael.

Following what proved to be an emotionally difficult time after the birth of her two children and the breakup of her marriage, Tierney began the highly personal project that launched her unsuspectingly into an artistic career, the documentation of her extended family.