Lorna Simpson

I thought I had already picked out my favorite artists before reading about Lorna Simpson and viewing some of her work. Lorna Simpson’s documentary-like images really speak to me. I am a huge movie addict, and each of her images, dating back to the ‘80’s is like a still from a film. All of the authors touched upon Simpson’s evolution from these posed images, which depicted themes of racial and sexual inequality, into mini-films. That was something that stuck out to me about Lorna Simpson: her individual evolution within the past thirty three, or so, years.

She went from creating model-esque images of African American males, to creating the same kinds of images using only female African- Americans. She pushed racial and gender stereotyping, profiling, prejudice, and inequality into the mainstream again even after the Civil Rights Movement.

The cool thing about her work, and what sets her apart from a lot of the artists we have looked at, is that she began taking her own photos, using her own work to create her work. It makes me feel more connected to her as an artist as compared to my connection with Barbara Kruger.

However, the most interesting thing to me about Simpson, after reading all of the texts, and watching the videos, is that she went through a period of time, when she created “Public Sex” that she just used her photos of landscapes and made them mean so much. The fact that she could take stark images, with high contrast, add a narrative, and it could convey so much meaning and bring the AIDS crisis into the public eye is incredible.

I’ve included an image from Radaris.com. It seems to be a sort-of self-portrait of Simpson. I don’t recall seeing it in any of the readings, but I’ve seen some of her stuff like this. The longer article talked about how Simpson takes away the identity of African Americans in order to send the message that they do not have an identity already because it has been taken away. So, if this is her self-portrait, I think that’s interesting.