American Flag (Scratch)
1999 - Photography (Photography)
Collier Schorr
Collier Schorr’s prints upend conventions of portrait photography by challenging what it means to “document” a subject. American Flag (Scratch) (1999), for example, depicts an unidentified male subject clad in an American flag-print singlet. With his head and extremities out of frame, the camera focuses on his flush-red torso, his left nipple protruding from the singlet’s strap. A horizontal scratch cuts across his right pectoral muscle, bleeding at its end and nearly dripping on the uppermost stripe of the flag print fabric. The scene’s context is ambiguous, and it is never clear if Schorr’s subject is entering a match or leaving it. By stripping the image of those anterior narratives, Schorr allows the viewer to fully revel in the image’s strange juxtapositions – of bloody injuries and healthy bodies, of patriotic symbols and exposed nipples – without resorting to narrative explication or symbolic interpretation.
Collier Schorr photographs communities of people, from high school wresters in her native New York to teenagers in the German countryside clad in American military uniforms. Her work displays an almost anthropological curiosity, and in documenting her subjects, she tries to find the idiosyncratic details through which people organize into “tribal” relationships with one another. Her images, by extension, blend photographic realism with elements of fiction and fantasy as a means of representing the various ways these tribes identify themselves. Schoor’s work also investigates gender and the ways in which subjects use visual cues and embodied signs to both inhabit and subvert assumed gender expectations.
Colors:
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Jason Meadows
2009The Striation Scrap Lamps (vertical and horizontal) although functioning as utilitarian objects also represent Jason Meadows’s interest in a certain kind of crafted sculpture...
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Kristen Morgin
2008Donald of Doom Tank (2008) is a replica of a vintage metal toy with Donald Duck’s image one side and a soldier on the other...
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Kristen Morgin
2008Jeep Comics is based on the second of only two issues published by RB Leffingwell and Company in 1944–45...
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William E. Jones
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Collier Schorr
2013In the Collage II (Marie) (2013), Shorr seems to have an ostensibly clear subject, a female subject identified in the work’s title as “Marie,” a slim but athletic woman with brown hair pictured reclining atop a brilliantly white sheet draped against a marbled tan-and-white backdrop...
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Jason Meadows
2009The Striation Scrap Lamps (vertical and horizontal) although functioning as utilitarian objects also represent Jason Meadows’s interest in a certain kind of crafted sculpture...
© » KADIST
Kristen Morgin
2008Donald of Doom Tank (2008) is a replica of a vintage metal toy with Donald Duck’s image one side and a soldier on the other...
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Other works by: » Collier Schorr
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Collier Schorr
2013In the Collage II (Marie) (2013), Shorr seems to have an ostensibly clear subject, a female subject identified in the work’s title as “Marie,” a slim but athletic woman with brown hair pictured reclining atop a brilliantly white sheet draped against a marbled tan-and-white backdrop...
Related artist(s) to: Collier Schorr » Catherine Opie, » Jens Hoffmann, » Larry Clark, » Glenn Ligon, » Hank Willis Thomas, » Hiroshi Sugimoto, » Walead Beshty, » Abraham Cruzvillegas, » Adriana Varejão, » Adriano Pedrosa
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Walead Beshty
2012Constructed out of metal or glass to mirror the size of FedEx shipping boxes, and to fit securely inside, Walead Beshty’s FedEx works are then shipped, accruing cracks, chips, scrapes, and bruises along the way to their destination...
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Catherine Opie
1987In this work, a woman sits on a couch with her shirt pulled up to expose her pierced nipples, which are connected by a chain...
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Hank Willis Thomas
2014Shot in black and white and printed on a glittery carborundum surface, Black Hands, White Cotton both confronts and abstracts the subject of its title...
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Alexandre da Cunha
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Kwan Sheung Chi
2007A Flags-Raising-Lowering Ceremony at my home’s cloths drying rack (2007) was realized in the year of the 10th anniversary of the establishment of The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China...
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Antonio Caro
2016Juego de Banderas (a play on words that loosely translates to both set of flags and game of flags) is a triptych of modified Colombian flags by Antonio Caro...
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Alexandre da Cunha
2011The series West (Flag 1), West (Flag 3), and West (Flag 6) continues da Cunha’s ongoing exploration of the form’s various vertical, horizontal, and diagonal stripes...