GRACIELA ITURBIDE, JUCHITÁN</a>
PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen

GRACIELA ITURBIDE, JUCHITÁN

In 1979, Graciela Iturbide traveled to Juchitán, a small town in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, to photograph the Zapotec indigenous group. For nearly a decade, she immersed herself in the community during a series of visits, spending long periods with Zapotec women and cultivating friendships…

Read More
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…

Read More
REN HANG, SELECTED WORKS
PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen

REN HANG, SELECTED WORKS

Ren Hang, who took his life February 23, 2017, was an unlikely rebel. Slight of build, shy by nature, prone to fits of depression, the 29-year-old Beijing photographer was nonetheless at the forefront Chinese artists’ battle for creative freedom…

Read More
THOMAS RUFF, NUDES
PHOTOGRAPHY, PORNOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen PHOTOGRAPHY, PORNOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen

THOMAS RUFF, NUDES

The nudes series was created by Ruff downloading photographs from online pornographic thumbnail galleries and enlarging and distorting them to varying degrees. Literally and figuratively blurring the boundaries between pornography, formalist nude photography, and the art historical genre of the nude…

Read More
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…

Read More
DEBORAH WILLIS, I MADE SPACE FOR A GOOD MAN, 2009
PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen

DEBORAH WILLIS, I MADE SPACE FOR A GOOD MAN, 2009

Printed at the Brandywine Workshop and Archives in Philadelphia, this color lithograph features a film photography triptych of Deborah Willis (presumably late 1975 or early 1976). In two of the three self-portraits, Willis sits reclining in a wicker chair wearing a black dress, eyes closed or cast down…

Read More
PETER HUJAR, LOVE &amp; LUST, 1969-1986
PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen

PETER HUJAR, LOVE & LUST, 1969-1986

Celebrated and revered by artists, the work of Peter Hujar remains something of a public secret, but his photographs dealing with sex and eroticism, made between the years 1969 and 1986, have come to define a certain era in New York…

Read More
AYANA V JACKSON, TAKE ME TO THE WATER
PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen

AYANA V JACKSON, TAKE ME TO THE WATER

Jackson uses the archival impulse to assess the impact of the colonial gaze on the history of photography and its relationship to ideas about the body. She uses her lens to deconstruct 19th and early 20th-century portraiture as a means for questioning photography’s role in constructing identities…

Read More
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…

Read More
LYLE ASHTON HARRIS, AMERICAS, 1987-88
PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen PHOTOGRAPHY Megan Christiansen

LYLE ASHTON HARRIS, AMERICAS, 1987-88

Harris produced an early series of black and white gelatin silver photographic prints titled “Americas” in 1987-88, in which he explored issues of race, gender, and sexuality through visual representation and their intersection in the formation of subjectivity…

Read More
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…

Read More