|
Biographical Sketch: Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson was born in 1960 in Brooklyn, New York. She was trained at
the School of Visual Arts in New York and then at the University of
California, San Diego. She began her career as a documentary
photographer and, though her work maintains its roots in the documentary
photography tradition, addressing themes of cultural, political, and
social significance, it has moved farther and farther from photography
per se. She is best known for her series of life-size "portraits" of
African-American women in which most of the models' facial features
"twist" or problematize the image itself. An example is Necklines.
Simpson's ability to challenge the meaning of the visual image by means
of her texts is matched by her desire to challenge our expectations about
photography itself. In the mid-1990s, for instance, she began to
experiment with printing her images on felt, as opposed to glossy
photographic paper. Where photographs normally seem to reflect light,
her images on felt seem to absorb it. She continues to experiment with
printing techniques, questions of size and scale, and the relationship
between the image and the viewer--so much so that it is increasingly
difficult to think of her as simply a photographer. Her art, rather,
approaches painting, sculpture, and even film, in its relation to its
audience.
Back to
A World of
Art Biographical Sketches
|
