A photograph of a tin box full of marijuana simply titled Green Box, speaks to the constantly changing status of the substance–once taboo or illicit, now a symbol of a growing industry in Northern California. In the past a photograph of marijuana would more likely be found in an evidence file than an art museum or gallery, but today continued debates about the legality of marijuana and the industry surrounding it has brought the substance into common public view. Green Box is a strong example of the current sociopolitical state of California and the grey areas that exist in legislature and at the same time illustrates the unavoidable commercialization of once underground cultures.
Dutch artist Ari Marcopoulos moved to the United States in 1980 and has become an important documentarian of American fringe culture over the last three decades. The subject matter of Marcopoulos’ photographs and videos have ranged from skateboarding and snowboarding to the New York art scene, including Warhol’s Factory, in the 1980’s. Now residing in Northern California, Marcopoulos has focused his lens on his family. Often documenting his sons against the California landscape, he has stressed that these photos are not meant to be autobiographical but archetypes of the idea of family. Through his prolific output of books, magazines, films, and exhibitions, Marcopuolos has provided the world with an inside view of cultures that are often inaccessible.
In Jackass (2008) by Ari Marcopoulos, his two sons, Cairo and Ethan, are pictured relaxing in a disheveled bedroom in their Sonoma home...
Charwai Tsai’s photograph documents her Hermit Crab Project installation upon the construction site of gallery Sora in Tokyo...
The Italian photographer Tina Modotti is known for her documentation of the mural movement in Mexico...
The fashion designer is selling off all the art inside his West Village townhouse at Sotheby’s New York to make way for a new collection....
The five works included in the Kadist Collection are representative of Pettibon’s complex drawings which are much more narrative than comics or cartoon...
As a visual activist for the rights of Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LBGTQI), Muholi’s photographs radically transgress the conventional perception of lesbian and transgender communities in South Africa...
In line with Hernández’s interest in catastrophe, Vulnerabilia (choques) is a collection of images of shipwrecks and Vulnerabilia (naufragios) collects scenes of car crashes...
Invited in 2007 to the Museum Folkwang in Essen (Germany), Simon Starling questioned its history: known for its collections and particularly for its early engagement in favor of modern art (including the acquisition and exhibition of works by Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Matisse), then destroyed during the Second World War, the museum was pillaged for its masterpieces of ‘degenerate art’ by the nazis...
In establishing a deliberate distance between viewer and subject, Lassry raises questions about representation itself and how all portraits are, in effect, fully constructed objects that only gain meaning once we ascribe them with our own personal associations and emotions...
A steel clothing rack adorned with turbine vents, Moroccan vintage jewelry, pinecones and knitting yarn, these heterogeneous elements are used here to create an exotic yet undefined identity within the work...
Seven family members and a cat all squeezed into the small five-room house, where Motoyuki Daifu grew up in Yokohama...
For the past two decades, An-My Lê has used photography to examine her personal history and the legacies of US military power, probing the tension between experience and storytelling....
In his composition, Chocolate Bars, Eggs, Milk, Lassry’s subjects are mirrored in their surroundings (both figuratively, through the chocolate colored backdrop and the brown frame; and literally, in the milky white, polished surface of the table), as the artist plays with color, shape, and the conventions of representational art both within and outside of the photographic tradition...