Only skin deep : changing visions of the American self / edited by Coco Fusco and Brian Wallis.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Fusco, Coco.

Wallis, Brian, 1953-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Portrait photography--United States--Exhibitions.

Portrait photography.

Race awareness--United States--Pictorial works--Exhibitions.

Race awareness.

United States.

Genre:

Pictorial works.

Exhibition catalogs.

Illustrated works.

Physical Description:

416 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 27 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : International Center of Photography/Harry N. Abrams, 2003.

Summary:

Few issues are as controversial as race and nation, reveating that after years of debate we still understand very little about how these terms of self-definition and identity work. Perhaps their meaning finds its most powerful expression in the medium of photography. Photographs have been used to present America as a haven for immigrants and a paradise of pioneers and entrepreneurs; yet photographs have also shown us a society fraught by racial conflict and struggles to transform the social order. Throughout the history of American photography, artists have responded to these mixed signals in a variety of ways. By bringing together a provocative selection of essays and images. Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self addresses the issues of nation, race, and selfhood and how they are depicted in ways that are challenging and informative, prompting readers to consider the impact of photography on our everyday lives. If photographs are chiefly responsible for perpetuating myths of American identity, can a different reading of these representations break down distorting stereotypes? This is the central question posed by Only Skin Deep. The authors in this book forcefully argue that race and nation -- and, indeed, photography itself -- are fictions, cultural constructions that shape our social interactions. Even as symbols, these photographic depictions of ethnic difference and cultural superiority have very real consequences. This collection of works and essays addresses, for example, the lingering consequences of American colonial expansion; the conflict between public and private visualizations of individuals; the role of commercial imagery in shaping gender roles; the impact of fantasy in ethnic or ethnographic photography; and the uses of science to provide justification for politicized depictions of "race."

Contents:

Racial Time, Racial Marks, Racial Metaphors / Coco Fusco 13

The Theoretical Status of the Concept of Race / Howard Winant 51

[Plates] I. Looking Up/Looking Down 62

The Traffic in Photographs / Allan Sekula 79

The Shadow and the Substance: Race, Photography, and the Index / Nicholas Mirzoeff 111

Looking for Empire in the U.S. Colonial Archive / Javier Morillo-Alicea 129

[Plates] II. Assimilate/Impersonate 144

Black Bodies, White Science: Louis Agassiz's Slave Daguerreotypes / Brian Wallis 163

Prairie Pinups: Reconsidering Historic Portraits of American Indian Women / Aleta M. Ringlero 183

No-Movies: The Art of False Documents / C. Ondine Chavoya 199

[Plates] III. Humanize/Fetishize 204

Skin Head Sex Thing: Racial Difference and the Homoerotic Imaginary / Kobena Mercer 237

The Consumption of Lynching Images / Leigh Raiford 267

Exposure / Deborah Willis 275

[Plates] IV. All for One/One for All 282

On the Matter of Whiteness / Richard Dyer 301

Autonomy and the Archive in America: Reexamining the Intersection of Photography and Stereotype / Lauri Firstenberg 313

Toyo Miyatake and "Our World" / Karin Higa 335

Passing Likeness: Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" and the Paradox of Iconicity / Sally Stein 345

[Plates] V. Progress/Regress 356

Where Truth Ends and Fantasy Begins: Postcards from the South Pacific / Caroline Vercoe 371

Morphologies: Race as a Visual Technology / Jennifer Gonzalez 379.

Notes:

"This publication was produced in conjunction with the exhibition Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self, organized by the International Center of Photography .. December 12, 2003 through February 29, 2004"--T.p. verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 404-408) and index.

ISBN:

0810946351

0810991659

OCLC:

51764331