What compels us to look at pictures of people? When is a photographic portrait successful? Does portraiture tell us more about the person sitting for the camera or the image-maker behind the lens?
Making Pictures of People considers these questions in a series of interviews focused on portraiture produced since 2000. A robust selection of works from 27 photographers sourced from within the online photo/arts community, this exhibition explores the breadth and diversity of portrait picture-making today. While some images emphasize the construction of identity through race, gender and class, others question the relationship between individuality and the ways we classify ourselves according to cultural imperatives. At the core of these different approaches is the artists’ exchange with their subjects and the creative inspirations that drive them to make images that push photographic portraiture forward.
The exhibition is an opportunity to consider the meaning of photographic portraiture as well as the multiplicity of images that define it. We’ve structured the show in a way that foregrounds the photographers’ voice — with an emphasis on their ideas, opinions, and experiences. Consider these interviews as you would a gallery talk, an occasion for the artists to share their creative motivations, the way they see the world, and the things that inspire their approach to portrait picture-making. Their images are just one part of the story — their voices add a unique dimension to understanding the work.
Making Pictures of People was produced in conjunction with the exhibition About Face: Contemporary Portraiture, organized by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, and shown there August 9, 2013–January 19, 2014. The exhibition will be available online in perpetuity.
Photographers included are:
Keliy Anderson-Staley • Yolanda del Amo • Christopher Churchill • Paul D’Amato • Jess T. Dugan • Doug DuBois • Matt Eich • Jason Florio • Jessica Todd Harper • Dave Jordano • Dina Kantor • Stacy Kranitz • Molly Landreth • Graham Miller • Jim Mortram • Lydia Panas • Laura Pannack • Deborah Parkin • Cara Phillips • Richard Renaldi • Simon Roberts • Marjorie Salvaterra • Betsy Schneider • Tema Stauffer • Shen Wei • Carrie Will • Susan Worsham.
Learn more about the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art exhibition »
An interview I did for the new issue of The Nation magazine, where I discuss my favourite photograph taken from my project, Motherland.
View/ read the interview (published in Russian) online here.
A Christmas tree and advertising billboard, Murmansk, Russia, January 2005 from the series Motherland.
My photograph ‘Vegetable seller, Bilibino, Russia, 2004’ is featured in the Beyond Words: Photography in The New Yorker exhibition currently on show at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing.
The exhibition features more than one hundred works by some 65 photographers from across the globe. Although the photographs have been gathered from a wide range of sources – including studios, galleries, archives, and private collections – and range chronologically from 1890 to 2010, every image was published in The New Yorker between 1992 and 2010, a formative period in the magazine’s history. The work in this exhibition was selected by co-curators Elisabeth Biondi and Cay Sophie Rabinowitz exclusively for the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing.
In recognition of International Women’s Day, here’s a photograph from my Motherland series:’Order of Maternal Glory dinner, Olkhon Island, Lake Baikal, Russia, 2004′.
From its official adoption in Russia following the Soviet Revolution in 1917 the holiday was predominantly celebrated in communist and socialist countries. In the West, International Women’s Day was first observed as a popular event after 1977 when the United Nations General Assembly invited member states to proclaim March 8 as the UN Day for Women’s Rights and International Peace.