TROY MONTES-MICHIE, SELECTED COLLAGES, 2013/2014
The themes I’m exploring are the intersections of race and gender and the exotification of the black male body. A lot of the more recent works I’ve been doing are images of black men from pornography that are cut up and collaged…
LORNA SIMPSON, SHE, 1992
Simpson focuses on challenging the construct of gender and questions society’s idea of femininity and how society thinks there is a direct link between codes of dress and femininity…
NONA FAUSTINE, WHITE SHOES, 2021
White Shoes is a collection of self-portraits taken in locations around New York that were central to the city’s once pivotal – and now largely obscured and unacknowledged – involvement in the slave trade…
LEIGH LEDARE, PERSONAL COMMISSIONS, 2008
For the project Personal Commissions Ledare answered Women Seeking Men personal advertisements posted in various New York City newspapers. While primarily serving as a vehicle for seeking out companionship, these ads often referenced phrases such as “tribute”, which only thinly disguised the subjects’ participation within an underground economy of intimacy, sexual gratification and material validation…
GILLIAN WEARING, ALBUM, 2003
The mask occupies a central place in the videos and photographs of Gillian Wearing. Wearing has employed various kinds of masks—from literal disguises to voice dubbing—to conceal the physical identities of her subjects and allow them to reveal their innermost secrets…
HANK WILLIS THOMAS - UNBRANDED: REFLECTIONS IN BLACK BY CORPORATE AMERICA, 2005-2008
Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America explores fifty years of print advertising targeted towards African-Americans—from 1968, a year of heightened social and political protest that saw the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., until 2008, the year of the election of the first African American president…
LARRY SULTAN, THE VALLEY
The cast and crew have gathered in the front yard of a ranch-style house, a few blocks from where I went to high school in the San Fernando Valley. Women in six-inch heels sink into the lawn; men push around camera equipment, anxious about losing the light…
ROBERT ANDY COOMBS, CRIPFAG
The title of the series embraces and reclaims two epithets “crip” and “fag.” In this suite of photographs, Coombs reimagines these words, producing a new context in which personal and revealing moments are carefully and sensitively laid bare. Challenging preconceptions of disability while revealing an autobiographical narrative filled with both joy and the banal, Coombs brings visitors along to relate and revel in his journey….
MARIKEN WESSELS: TAKING OFF. HENRY MY NEIGHBOR, 2015
Taking Off is a real picture story of a failed marriage, of sexual frustration and voyeurism. An extraordinary amount of photographs and cut-up collages comprise an archival vertigo of amateur nude art…
SUSAN MEISELAS, CARNIVAL STRIPPERS, 1972-1975.
From 1972 to 1975, I spent my summers photographing and interviewing women who performed striptease for small town carnivals in New England, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. As I followed the girl shows from town to town, I photographed the dancers' public performances as well as their private lives…
APRIL DAWN ALISON, POLAROIDS
April Dawn Alison, the private persona of an Oakland-based commercial photographer known to family, friends, and neighbors as Alan Schaefer (1941–2008). Approximately 9,200 Polaroids were made over the course of more than thirty years, and discovered upon the artist’s death…
JEN DAVIS: ELEVEN YEARS
"In this body of work, I deal with my insecurities about my body image and the direct correlation between self-perception and the way one is perceived by others. Photography is the medium that I use to tell my story through life, an outlet for revealing my thoughts and opinions about the society in which we live. A society that dictates beauty based on ones physical appearance…
LAURA AGUILAR, THREE EAGLES FLYING, 1990
“Three Eagles Flying is the product of the last ten years of my life that presents an evolutionary journey of mind and spirt leading to the cultural identity that today I call, Me. In the struggle to gain self-knowledge and acceptance, the often-oppressive judgements of others have had a significant influence on my developing identity…
ZANELE MUHOLI: SOMNYAMA NGONYAMA, HAIL THE DARK LIONESS, 2018
“I am producing this photographic document to encourage individuals in my community to be brave enough to occupy spaces―brave enough to create without fear of being vilified… . To teach people about our history, to rethink what history is all about, to reclaim it for ourselves―to encourage people to use artistic tools such as cameras as weapons to fight back.”