JALEEL MARQUES PORCHA, HIGH INTERROGATION
JaLeel is a multidisciplinary artist whose works engage in notions of the archive and history; community and universality; (transgenerational) trauma and the ideas of overcoming said trauma…
MING SMITH, SELECTED WORKS
Harlem-based, Detroit-born, Ming Smith attended the famous Howard University, Washington, DC. Ming Smith first became a photographer when she was given a camera, and was the first female member to join Kamoinge, a collective of black photographers in New York in the 1960s, working to document black life…
MARINA ABRAMOVIC, RHYTHM 0, 1974
In Rhythm 0 (1974), she invited audience members to do whatever they wanted to her using any of the 72 items she provided: pen, scissors, chains, axe, loaded pistol, and others…
RINEKE DIJKSTRA, BEACH PORTRAITS, 2002
Tall, skinny, short, round, squat, awkward, slouched, tanned, bashful, and sometimes unknowingly beautiful, the adolescents in Rineke Dijkstra's Beach Portraits stand alone, the ocean rolling behind them…
TINA BARNEY, NUDES
A lesser known part of Barney's back catalougue however, is the series of nude portraits she created in the early 1990s. Exhibited just once and since left to gather dust in a closet in her Rhode Island home, in these rarely seen photographs Barney reacted against what she says had become for her the somewhat stilted poses of her friends and family…
THE DEATH AND LIFE OF MARSHA P. JOHNSON, 2017
Victoria Cruz investigates the mysterious 1992 death of black gay rights activist and Stonewall veteran, Marsha P. Johnson. Using archival interviews with Johnson, and new interviews with Johnson's family, friends and fellow activists…
DAVID WOJNAROWICZ, A FIRE IN MY BELLY, 1986-87
Echoing themes explored throughout David Wojnarowicz's art and writing, A Fire in My Belly is a visceral meditation on cultural and individual identity, spirituality, and belief systems. On a trip to Mexico City with Tommy Turner to scout Day of the Dead imagery, Wojnarowicz shot 25 rolls of super-8 film, documenting scenes that embodied the violence of city life…
OZIER MUHAMMAD, HARLEM
Chicago-born, Muhammad is the grandson of Nation of Islam Founder Elijah Muhammad. Coming of age in that famous family of Black Muslim leaders — itself spotlighted in an array of news, commentary and pictures — he picked up jazz and a Yashica film camera around the same time…
TIFFANY J. SUTTON, BLACK BODY RADIATION
Photographer Tiffany Sutton’s body of work is rooted in narrative portraiture, family vernacular, and candid documentary photography. Her style developed out of an interest in cinematography. Her still images were mostly a self-biography that grew into something more…
SARAH LUCAS, SELF-PORTRAIT WITH FRIED EGGS, 1996
Sarah Lucas’s portrayals of the body have a strong sense of humour and they challenge sexual stereotypes and conventional morals. In Self Portrait with Fried Eggs, Sarah Lucas looks back at the viewer with a confrontational stare...
TARRAH KRAJNAK, MASTER RITUALS II: WESTON'S NUDES, 2020
Deconstructing Edward Weston’s Nudes in the form of self-portraits, the artist Tarrah Krajnak inserts herself as both author and subject into Weston’s original work…
JOY GREGORY, OBJECTS OF BEAUTY, 1992 – 1995
Who can deny the power of a pair of hairdresser’s scissors, or the bewitching effect of a set of dark false eyelashes? These images raise questions about women’s pursuit of changing ideals of beauty and the meanings we attach to the objects themselves…
FEMALE SENSIBILITY, LYNDA BENGLIS, 1973,
Two women, faces framed in tight focus, kiss and caress. Their interaction is silent, muted by Benglis' superimposition of a noisy, distracting soundtrack of appropriated AM radio…
MARIA KHEIRKHAH, I THINK THEREFORE I QUESTION, 2002-3
For me self-representation is always about self-reflection, self-agency. It is also a signal, a reminder of erasure and misrepresentation. Speaking back to this erasure becomes about claiming one's own history, claiming one's past, present and future self…
FRANCESCA WOODMAN, SELECTED WORKS
THOMAS ALLEN HARRIS, THROUGH A LENS DARKLY, 2014
The first documentary to explore the role of photography in shaping the identity, aspirations, and social emergence of African Americans from slavery to the present, Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People probes the recesses of American history through images that have been suppressed, forgotten, and lost…
DOUBLE BLIND (NO SEX LAST NIGHT), SOPHIE CALLE, 1996
In her premiere video project, French conceptual artist Sophie Calle joins with Gregory Shephard to create a voyeuristic tour de force…
STEPH FOSTER, THE EYES BENEATH THE OAK,
One of the most pernicious aspects of our prison system is how it renders people invisible and inaudible so that their stories are hidden from our collective understanding. This allows the perpetuation of exploitative and abusive systems that disproportionately affect people of color, as their experiences are systematically hidden from view…
SALLY MANN, AT TWELVE, PORTRAITS OF YOUNG WOMEN, 1988
At Twelve is Sally Mann’s revealing, collective portrait of twelve-year-old girls on the verge of adulthood. To be young and female in America is a time of tremendous excitement and social possibilities; it is a trying time as well, caught between childhood and adulthood, when the difference is not entirely understood…
RAYMOND THOMPSON JR, THE TRAUMA OF WHITE LIGHT
The trauma of white light features appropriated photographs created by the Farm Security Administration photographers in the 1930s. These images are reprinted on living tobacco leaves using the chlorophyll printing technique…