Carland’s series of large-format photographs Lesbian Beds (2002) depicts beds that have been recently vacated. Shot from directly above, they are lavish views of very private spaces. The artist plays to her viewers’ voyeuristic impulses, inviting us to look, but then denying us the opportunity to study the figures to whom the sheets belong, so that the rumpled covers become like anthropomorphic stand-ins inviting empathic projection.
Using photography, text, and video, Tammy Rae Carland tactically realigns traditional ideas of love, partnership, domesticity, and family. Her work consistently subverts heteronormative conceptions of gender and sexuality; positive representations function simultaneously as portrait and protest. Based in Oakland, she is the chair of the photography program at California College of the Arts.
Lynn Hershman Leeson’s genre-bending documentary Strange Culture tells the story of how one man’s personal tragedy turns into persecution by a paranoid, conservative, and overzealous government...
Using the seminal 1958 film Vertigo as a launchpad, Lynn Hershman Leeson explores the blurred lines between fact and fantasy in VertiGhost , a film commissioned by the Fine Arts Museums in San Francisco...
The title Untitled Passport II was first used by Felix Gonzalez-Torres in an unlimited edition of small booklets, each containing sequenced photographs of a soaring bird against an open sky...
Trevor Paglen’s ongoing research focuses on artificial intelligence and machine vision, i.e...
Sweet Jesus is a sound installation by Lutz Bacher that consists of a found recording of James Earl Jones’ iconic voice reciting biblical genealogy from Matthew, Book 1...
In this work, a woman sits on a couch with her shirt pulled up to expose her pierced nipples, which are connected by a chain...
Nuevo Dragon City is a reenactment of a historical event from 1927 in which six Chinese were either trapped or voluntarily hid themselves inside a building in northern Mexico...
The title of Rainbow Body by Chitra Ganesh refers to an elevated state of, or metaphor for, the consciousness transformation known as a rainbow body...
Domes #1 represents a significant moment in Chicago’s career when her art began to change from a New York-influenced Abstract Expressionist style to one that reflected the pop-inflected art being made in Los Angeles...
Although best known as a provocateur and portraitist, Opie also photographs landscapes, cityscapes, and architecture...
Working independently, Herndon experimented at the forefront of a now-canonical method—appropriation—by painting additions into found images from magazines such as Life and Sports Illustrated in a way that imbues the resulting works with mythical significance...
In Jackass (2008) by Ari Marcopoulos, his two sons, Cairo and Ethan, are pictured relaxing in a disheveled bedroom in their Sonoma home...
Unlike many of his earlier films which often present poignant critiques of mass media and its deleterious effects on American culture, EASTER MORNING , Conner’s final video work before his death in 2008, constitutes a far more meditative filmic essay in which a limited amount of images turn into compelling, almost hypnotic visual experience...
The Black Canyon Deep Semantic Image Segments by Trevor Paglen merges traditional American landscape photography (sometimes referred as ‘frontier photography’ for sites located in the American West) with artificial intelligence and other technological advances such as computer vision...
Burrito Bay is a video by George Kuchar that follows the format of a diary or travelogue centered on a tropical trip to Acapulco, Mexico...
In 1977, as an already-established artist best known for his films, Bruce Conner began to photograph punk rock shows at Mabuhay Gardens, a San Francisco club and music venue...
This is not in Spanish looks at the ways in which the Chinese population in Mexico navigates the daily marginalization they encounter there...
Half Dome Hough Transform by Trevor Paglen merges traditional American landscape photography (sometimes referred as ‘frontier photography’ for sites located in the American West) with artificial intelligence and other technological advances such as computer vision...
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...
Human Quarry is a large work on paper by Leslie Shows made of a combination of acrylic paint and collage...