Board_Advisors_etc 3..5

Guarded Conditions, a 1989 work by Lorna
Simpson, calls attention to the double plight of
black women that results from both gender and
skin color. The piece comprises 18 photographic
panels joined to depict, from behind, a black
female figure six times. The repeated phrases
‘‘SEX ATTACKS’’ ‘‘SKIN ATTACKS’’ comple-
ment these visual elements, running in three lines
beneath them. Here, the model’s particular poses,
the fragmentation of the body caused by the indi-
vidual panels, and the repetitive words all combine
to challenge representational, and hence social,
conventions and expectations. Amerindian social
campaigner Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie frequently
employs digital processes to craft visual-verbal col-
lages that critique the Eurocentric perspectives
until very recently disguised as ‘‘neutral vision,’’
while Bill Jacobson, photographing gay commu-
nities at the height of the AIDS pandemic, blurred
the subjects of his black-and-white images beyond
recognition so as to erase any visible differences
between the healthy and the sick, between various
ethnicities, or even between men and women.
It is important to recognize that all photographic
representation in proliferation influences the way
we perceive a particular group—whether the pho-
tographer consciously intended this effect or not,
and no matter the degree of constructedness
involved in the portrayal. It is also worth remem-
bering that although many eloquent accounts, ver-
bal and visual, exist that challenge and complicate
their assumptions, the concepts of both pho-
tographic veracity and neutral vision still hold sig-
nificant sway at the beginning of the twenty-first
century, with, for example, millions of picture iden-
tity cards in circulation worldwide. And while it
may be essentially impossible to successfully read
character or attitude from a photograph, any pho-
tograph, we continuously do so anyway, thereby
unwittingly accenting the importance of social
representation and the necessity to carefully under-
stand what we perceive, how, and why.

PetraDreiser

Seealso:Clark, Larry; Davidson, Bruce; Farm

Security Administration; Feminist Photography;

Hine, Lewis; Kruger, Barbara; Photographic

‘‘Truth’’; Propaganda; Representation; Representa-

tion and Gender; Representation and Race; Roth-

stein, Arthur; Simpson, Lorna; Sontag, Susan;

VanDerZee, James; Vernacular Photography;

Works Progress Administration

Further Reading

Batchen, Geoffrey.Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography,

History. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.

Clark, Larry.Tulsa. New York: Lustrum, 1971; New York:

Grove, 2000.

Dyer, Richard. Introduction toThe Matter of Images:

Essays on Representations. London and New York:

Routledge, 1993.

Ewald, Wendy.I Dreamed I Had a Girl in My Pocket: The

Story of an Indian Village. New York and London:

DoubleTake Books, 1996.

Frank, Robert.The Americans. New York: Grove, 1959;

Zurich: Stemmle, 1998.

Hirsch, Robert J.Seizing the Light: A History of Photogra-

phy. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2000.

Hooks, Bell. ‘‘In Our Glory: Photography and Black Life.’’

InArt on My Mind: Visual Politics. New York: New

Press, 1995.

Marien, Mary Warner.Photography: A Cultural History.

New York: Abrams, 2002.

Moscovici, Serge.Social Representations: Explorations in

Social Psychology. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000.

Rothstein, Arthur. ‘‘Direction in the Picture Story.’’ InThe

Complete Photographer. vol. 4. Edited by Willard Mor-

gan. New York: Education Alliance, 1942.

Sheikh, Fazal.A Camel for the Son. Winterthur, Switzer-

land: Volkart Foundation, 2001.

Sontag, Susan.On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus

and Giroux, 1977.

Stott, William.Documentary Expression and Thirties Amer-

ica. London and New York: Oxford University Press,

1973.

Tagg, John.The Burden of Representation: Essays on Pho-

tographies and Histories. London: Macmillan, 1988.

Trachtenberg, Alan.Reading American Photographs: Images

as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans.NewYork:

Hill and Wang, 1989.

SOCIAL REPRESENTATION