SHEN WEI, THIRTEEN DAYS IN 2004
PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen

SHEN WEI, THIRTEEN DAYS IN 2004

When I first moved to New York City, I started photographing myself. I wanted to document my footsteps along this journey, like a visual diary: to document my first year of life in the city. But I didn’t show these images until 2017…

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ALEXIS RUISECO LOMBERA, AQUI AYA, 2017-19
PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen

ALEXIS RUISECO LOMBERA, AQUI AYA, 2017-19

Aqui Aya, 2017-19, is an investigation of place, belonging, and inherited family using self-portraiture. As I cross borders between Cuba and the United States, this series of photographs reflects on displacement as a structure of feeling and an assemblage of family as a world making strategy...

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ELEANOR ANTIN, CARVING: A TRADITIONAL SCULPTURE 1972
PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen

ELEANOR ANTIN, CARVING: A TRADITIONAL SCULPTURE 1972

A landmark early feminist work, Eleanor Antin’s Carving: A Traditional Sculpture comprises 148 black-and-white photographs documenting the artist’s loss of 10 pounds over 37 days. Every morning she was photographed naked in the same four stances to record her barely perceptible self-induced weight loss…

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ANNIE HSIAO-CHING WANG, THE MOTHER AS CREATOR
PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen

ANNIE HSIAO-CHING WANG, THE MOTHER AS CREATOR

Over the years – 21 to be precise – the project evolved, deepening as did the tender relationship between mother and son. The near-annual photographic traditions brought Annie and her son closer, “because we often need to recall, review and revise” both the past and future in order to make a new image…

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TOMMY KHA, I’M ONLY HERE TO LEAVE, 2015-PRESENT
PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen

TOMMY KHA, I’M ONLY HERE TO LEAVE, 2015-PRESENT

I’m Only Here to Leave – a phrase taken from a conversation Kha had when he met performance artist and musician Genesis P-Orridge – started out as a series of cardboard cutout images of the photographer’s face and body, which he placed into ­real-world surroundings…

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CARLA J WILLIAMS, SELECT WORKS, 1983-1986
PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen

CARLA J WILLIAMS, SELECT WORKS, 1983-1986

Making self-portraits and using instant film and prints, I knew I had complete control over the images and thus invested in them a degree of freedom that I might not have if I had thought anyone would ever see them, because I didn't think anyone ever would…

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JOHN COPLANS, SELECTED PHOTOGRAPHS
PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen

JOHN COPLANS, SELECTED PHOTOGRAPHS

I photograph my body. I generalize it by beheading myself to make my body more like any other man's. Nakedness removes the body from the specificity of time: unclothed, it belongs to the past, present, and future…

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D’ANGELO LOVELL WILLIAMS, CONTACT HIGH, 2022
PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen

D’ANGELO LOVELL WILLIAMS, CONTACT HIGH, 2022

Contact High offers an expansive engagement with the visualisation of desire and depiction of the Black body. Williams’s narrative images reflect the many forms in which Black queer people exist and have existed historically within each other’s lives, picturing them as sitters, lovers, caregivers, or shadows…

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MAXINE WALKER, SELECTED WORKS, 1985-1997
Megan Christiansen Megan Christiansen

MAXINE WALKER, SELECTED WORKS, 1985-1997

In her 1995 series, ‘Untitled’, British-Jamaican photographer Maxine Walker disrupts the idea of an approved womanhood through a photo booth style montage of self-portraits, presented as if taken within seconds of each other…

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NONA FAUSTINE, WHITE SHOES, 2021
PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen

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…

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LEIGH LEDARE, PERSONAL COMMISSIONS, 2008
PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen

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…

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GILLIAN WEARING, ALBUM, 2003
PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen

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…

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