“You will think you know them,” Erica Deeman says at the end of a video about her portraits of black men, called Brown. “And you’ll be wrong.” The same could be said of the women in her series Silhouettes, which goes on view September 14 at Laurence Miller’s new Chelsea location. The women, from the African diaspora, are pictured in profile against a white background, in a shadow that withholds detail and nuance, at least initially. Like Kara Walker, Deeman knows that her use of silhouettes will hit a few historical chords – the 18th-century pseudoscientific practice of physiognomy, which aligned features to character in order to justify racism, but also the use of silhouettes to memorialize and honor a loved one. Both are tapped into in this series, which includes our cover image, Untitled #24.
Phillip Toledano: Another America
In darkly humorous photographs, Toledano explores the new world(s) of AI.
Newly discovered images by Ernest Cole, Daido Moriyama’s magazine work, and Cindy Sherman’s unnerving "self-portraits"
A discovery of a large cache of negatives by Ernest Cole led to a new book, The True America.
Best of 2016
Formed in 1963 by 11 photographers who recognized the necessity of “a forum to address the underrepresentation of African Americans in their field,” the Kamoinge Workshop gave its members a sense of solidarity and support in a period when black Americans were the frequent subject of mainstream media coverage but rarely its author.
Erica Deeman
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July – August 2011 About The Cover
Longer ago than I care to admit, I made my one and...
July – August 2009 About The Cover
Photography remembers, of course, but it can also ...
Alec Soth
How does a country or a community discover itself,...
Photo-Poetics: Works Both Allusive and Elusive
With nearly two billion images posted each day on ...
Tyler Mitchell
On June 21, Atlanta native Tyler Mitchell’s exhibi...
A Sprawling Personal Project from Jim Goldberg and Two Retrospectives
Goldberg’s Coming and Going is an autobiography in images and ephemera, and two recent books survey the work of Lee Miller and Daido Moriyama.
Debi Cornwall: New-Style Documentarian
In a trilogy about the American condition, the Prix Elysée-winning photographer employs indirection, inviting viewers to consider what lies outside the frame.
May – June 2011 About The Cover
Frank Zappa once described Columbus, Ohio, as a to...