Samuel Draxler is a writer, photographer, and curator whose artistic work explores desire, longing, and loss. His photographic projects play with the contradictions between excerpting and cataloging, as well as between the presence of an index and the distance of a reproduction. Draxler's writing has appeared in publications including Texte Zur Kunst, Art in America, and Avidly. His arts programming has been featured in Artforum, Modern Painters, Bomb Magazine, and Art in America, among others.

Draxler currently works as the Administrative Manager for the Dean's Office, The Cooper Union School of Art. Previously, he was the Director of NYPAC, the New York Performance Artists Collective; the Co-Director of La MaMa Galleria; and the Associate Director of Johannes Vogt Gallery. Draxler has provided communications, production, documentation, and curatorial services for institutions including David Nolan Gallery, Thomas Erben Gallery, the Knockdown Center, Barnard College, and the James Gallery at CUNY. Draxler received his B.A. in Art History from Columbia University.

memento mori novies (remember to die nine times), 2024-25, collaged inkjet prints

An Inventory (6151 Richmond Street), 2017-18, inkjet prints. A series of rephotographs of the vases that appear on set throughout the run of the American sitcom The Golden Girls (1985-92).

Portals, 2015, gold leaf, charcoal, lapis lazuli, and mylar on wall. A continuous circle inscribed on the wall depicts the title of 18th century German utopianist Christian Gottlieb Priber's doctoral thesis concerning the application of Roman law to German government. A second circle of text cites an American court case from Maryland, 1982, in which a mentally disabled man was restrained in such a way that he died of asphyxiation. As stated in the ruling: "The use of force, however, is not per se unconstitutional."

Strike, 2012, inkjet prints and water

Watershed | The End, 2011-12, newspapers and water

Last Light, 2010, inkjet print. A series of film portraits taken over Skype.