Tamara Staples is a Brooklyn-based photographer and multidisciplinary artist working in photography, video, and installation, with a studio in Gowanus. A University of Florida BFA graduate, she is best known for her pure-bred poultry portraits, published by Chronicle Books as The Fairest Fowl (2001) and The Magnificent Chicken (2013), with an introduction by Ira Glass. Her project Side Effects May Include, examining mental health and poly-pharmacy through photographs of pills, debuted at ICA San Jose in 2017 before traveling to Blue Sky Gallery in Portland and Firelands Association for the Visual Arts. Her current project, Wasteland, extends this pill-based imagery to examine the American healthcare system. Her photographs are held by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and she is a Rauschenberg Residency fellow and two-time NYFA grant recipient.