Search results for ""author sophie hackett""

This powerful collection highlights the importance of snapshots in Black American life: as tools to challenge stereotypes, and as a way to document family and culture Thoughtfully illustrated, this volume highlights a selection of photographs of African American family life between the 1970s and the early 2000s—pictures that were lost by their original owners and then found by the artist Zun Lee on a street in Detroit in 2012, marking the beginning of the Fade Resistance collection of more than 4,000 Polaroids. Lee describes the collection as an important record of Black visual self-representation and a means to “reflect the way Black people saw themselves on their terms—without the intention of being seen, or judged, by others.” To Lee, these powerful photographs are an expression of "Black life mattering." These vivid images chronicle milestones such as weddings, birthdays and graduations, as well as quiet daily moments, offering contemporary views long ignored or erased by mainstream culture. Together, these works highlight the role snapshots have played in Black life, as tools to challenge stereotypical portrayals and as a means to memorialize family, culture and heritage. Topics such as self-representation, visual history and the social power of photographs are addressed in critical texts by Sophie Hackett, Stefano Harney, Zun Lee and Fred Moten, and an original contribution by celebrated poet Dawn Lundy Martin.

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Brings together a wealth of research and an expansive selection of photographs to create an enduring account of America's first known trans network, Casa Susanna. In the 1950s and 60s, an underground network of transgender women and cross-dressing men found refuge at a modest house in the Catskills region of New York. Known as Casa Susanna, the house provided a safe place to express their true selves and live for a few days as they had always dreamed - dressed as and living as women without fear of being incarcerated or institutionalized for their self-expression. This book opens up that now-lost world. The photographs - mostly discovered by chance in a New York flea market in 2004 - chronicle the experiences of men who dressed as women, gender nonconforming people, and transwomen in states of relaxation, experimentation, connection and joy. All of this was made possible by Susanna Valenti who - on her own journey toward womanhood - created Casa Susanna, a protected space where others could crossdress and live freely as women. Supplementing the images are excerpts from Transvestia, a magazine that allowed those who had been cast out by a rigidly binary society to connect in a different medium. The people who came to Casa Susanna found a spot where they could explore and celebrate their own and each other’s femininity, as they could not do elsewhere. Their creations are also a reminder that there were, and still are, many ways to explore the boundaries of gender.

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Suzy Lake has been examining and critiquing ideals of the body, gender, and identity since the late 1960s. In her photographs, videos, and performances, she draws attention to social norms and constraints and aims to diminish the barrier between the viewer and the artwork. Introducing Suzy Lake follows the artist in images across five decades, as her political ideals are forged in Detroit’s civil rights movement in the late 1960s; as she realizes her first successes in Montreal’s artist-led cultural boom of the 1970s in the post-Expo 67, post-Duplessis era; and since 1978 in Toronto, as she finds her home and hones her artistic vision. Influenced by artists such as Cindy Sherman, Lake’s work demonstrates the innovation and continued influence of the “Feminist Avant-Garde” on contemporary art. Introducing Suzy Lake features almost 100 reproductions of Lake’s photographs, some drawn from celebrated installations, others from newly commissioned series. Complemented by essays by Allyson Mitchell, Robert Longo, Elizabeth Smith, Michelle Jacques, and Sara Angel, Introducing Suzy Lake reveals the richness and originality of Lake’s work and her stature as one of North America’s most influential contemporary artists.

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Like Invisibles and Snapshots of Dangerous Women, Outsiders is an accessible visual tour through life experienced on the margins of mainstream society. Squired through the social turmoil of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s by artists like Diane Arbus and Nan Goldin, Outsiders is an unforgettable look at people whose identity is in flux. Idealists, outsiders, and those brave enough to be themselves shot by visionary photographers including Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, and Nan Goldin reveal the roots of America's influential counterculture.

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