This book examines the work of 20th century and contemporary African and Diasporic portrait photographers within the context of the construction of Africa as a political idea.
How have women artists used photography as a tool of resistance? Our Selves explores the connections between photography, feminism, civil rights, Indigenous sovereignty and queer liberation Spanning more than 100 years of photography, the works in Our Selves range from a turn-of-the-century photograph of racially segregated education in the United States, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, to a contemporary portrait celebrating Indigenous art forms, by the Chemehuevi artist Cara Romero.
As the title of this volume suggests, Our Selves affirms the creative and political agency of women artists. A critical essay by curator Roxana Marcoci asks the question "What is a Feminist Picture?" and reconsiders the art-historical canon through works by Claude Cahun, Tina Modotti, Carrie Mae Weems, Catherine Opie and Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie, among others. Twelve focused essays by emerging scholars explore themes such as identity and gender, the relationship between educational systems and power, and the ways in which women artists have reframed our received ideas about womanhood.
Published in conjunction with a groundbreaking exhibition of photographs by women artists--drawn exclusively from MoMA's collection, thanks to a transformative gift of photographs from Helen Kornblum in 2021--this richly illustrated catalog features more than 100 color and black-and-white plates. As we continue to aspire to equity and diversity, Our Selves contributes vital insights into figures too often relegated to the margins of our cultural imagination.
At once quietly grand and pervasively eerie, An-My Lê's photography and art explores scenes of conflict and political intrigue, both real and simulated.
Through her photographs, videos, installations and embroidered works, An-My Lê considers the cycles of global history and conflict, the complexities of diaspora and the sensationalizing of warfare. Published to accompany the artist's major survey at the Museum of Modern Art, An-My Lê: Between Two Rivers is the first catalog to present Lê's three-decade practice in different mediums, with seven photographic series presented alongside textiles, installations and newly rediscovered films. The two rivers in the title refer to the Mekong River in Vietnam and the Mississippi River in the southern United States, two important geographic locations that appear in the artist's photography from her earliest to her most recent works. An essay by curator Roxana Marcoci examines the full sweep of Lê's creative practice; essays by scholars La Frances Hui, Joan Kee, Thy Phu and Caitlin Ryan each focus on specific series; and two texts by writers Monique Truong and Ocean Vuong bring poetic sensibility to Lê's singular perspective.
An-My Lê (born 1960) was born in Saigon, Vietnam, and came to the US in 1975 as a political refugee after the fall of Saigon. She studied at Stanford University before attending Yale School of Art, receiving her MFA in 1993. Her previous publications include Small Wars (2005) and Events Ashore (2014), and she is the recipient of the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1997) and the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2012). Lê teaches at Bard College and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Encounters with extraordinary photographs, from the very beginnings of the medium to the present day. Highlighting a selection of extraordinary photographs spanning more than a century of the medium's history, Time Travelers: Photographs from the Gayle Greenhill Collection presents images that transport viewers across space and time. Reflecting a multitude of styles, approaches, and processes, the works in Time Travelers date from photography's earliest years to our present moment.
Josef Albers is widely recognized as a crucial figure in 20th-century art, both as an independent practitioner and as a teacher at the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College and Yale University. Albers made paintings, drawings and prints and designed furniture and typography. Arguably the least familiar aspect of his extraordinary career was his inventive engagement with photography, only widely known after his death, including his production of approximately 70 photocollages that feature photographs he made at the Bauhaus between 1928 and 1932. These works anticipate concerns that he would pursue throughout his career--the effects of adjacency, the exploration of color through white, black and gray, and the delicate balance between handcraft and mechanical production. Albers' photographs were first shown at MoMA in a modest exhibition in 1988, when the Museum acquired two photocollages. In 2015 the Museum acquired ten additional photocollages, making its collection the most substantial anywhere outside the Albers Foundation. This publication reproduces each of the photocollages Albers made at the Bauhaus, presenting the scope of this achievement for the first time. An introductory essay by Sarah Hermanson Meister situates them within the contexts of modernist photography, the Bauhaus ethos and of Albers' own practice.
