I am an multi-disciplinary artist and writer based in Oakland, California. My work generally involves acts of close observation, whether it's birdwatching, collecting screen shots, or trying to parse bizarre forms of e-commerce. In one of my favorite projects, I created The Bureau of Suspended Objects, a searchable online archive of 200 objects salvaged from the San Francisco dump, each with photographs and painstaking research into its material, corporate, and manufacturing histories. I am compelled by the ways in which attention (or lack thereof) leads to consequential shifts in perception at the level of the everyday.

My visual work has been exhibited at The Contemporary Jewish Museum, the New York Public Library, Ever Gold Projects, the Marjorie Barrick Museum (Las Vegas), Les Rencontres D'Arles, Fotomuseum Antwerpen, Fotomuseum Winterthur, La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris), the Lishui Photography Festival (China), the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, apexart (NY), East Wing (Dubai), and the Google headquarters. I've been an artist in residence at Recology SF (the dump), the San Francisco Planning Department, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Palo Alto Art Center, ODC Dance Center, Facebook, and the Internet Archive. I also teach digital art at Stanford University.

My writing has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, The Atlantic, The Believer, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, SFMOMA's Open Space, The Creative Independent, and Sierra Magazine. My NYT bestselling book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, was published by Melville House in 2019.

I am represented by Caroline Eisenmann (ce@goldinlit.com) at the Frances Goldin Literary Agency. For inquiries related to How to Do Nothing, please contact Stephanie DeLuca (stephanie@mhpbooks.com) at Melville House. Please note that I am unavailable for assignments and projects through the end of this summer. For some announcements, but mostly bird photos, follow me on twitter: @the_jennitaur.

recent / upcoming:
-"Why Birds Do What They Do" in the June 2020 issue of The Atlantic
- 2020 commencement speaker for the Harvard Graduate School of Design
- interviewed by Ezra Klein on the Ezra Klein Show
- interviewed by Willa Koerner for The Creative Independent
- interview with writer, filmmaker and artist Miranda July for City Arts and Lectures (recorded webcast)
- conversation with Wendy Liu, author of Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism for Lithub
- review of Rebecca Solnit's Recollections of My Nonexistence for the New York Times Book Review