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11/12/2003

Only Skin Deep

International Center of Photography ICP, New York

A GROUNDBREAKING EXHIBITION THAT FOCUSES ON ISSUES OF NATION, RACE AND SELFHOOD

Despite years of debate in America about the topics of race and nationalism, we still understand very little about how these terms of self-definition and identity work, and few issues remain as controversial. On December 12, 2003, the International Center of Photography (ICP), 1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street in New York City, will open Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self, the first comprehensive view of how photography—the medium through which these terms find powerful expression—has shaped both stereotypes and changing perceptions of what Americans look like. This exhibition, which will travel next year throughout the United States, hopes to challenge some of the myths and preconceptions governing our sense of identity; it takes a bold approach in asking each viewer to rethink his or her idea of what makes anyone less or more American.

Only Skin Deep is a Millennium Project supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts with major funding provided by Corbis, Altria Group, Inc., The Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation, and additional support from Samuel L. and Dominique Milbank and from the Third Millennium Foundation.

''This project asks each viewer to question her or his own identity and the ways it is shaped by and linked to wider social ideas through photography,'' says Willis E. Hartshorn, Ehrenkranz Director of ICP. ''Despite the regular media claims that we have moved beyond race or that shifting demographics have made the concept irrelevant, ongoing political and social clashes attest to the contrary. If race is a myth, it remains an explosive one.''

A multi-faceted project including an illustrated book and a separate online exhibition, Only Skin Deep's main component will be an exhibition of more than 300 works. Dating from the mid-19th century to the present, the material to be included will range from daguerreotypes to vintage postcards, film stills, prints from negatives, and digital images. The exhibition also spans a range of genres and movements, including commercial photography, portraiture, social documentary, photojournalism, ethnographic and scientific photography, Pictorialism, Surrealism, reportage, and erotica. The images created in these varied styles offer a critical rereading of the archive of the history of photography. This applies to the works of famous photographers—such as Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Margaret Bourke-White and Edward Steichen—as well as lesser-known historical figures, including Charles Eisenmann, Frances Benjamin Johnston, Will Soule and Toyo Miyatake. Contemporary artists and photographers who have moved beyond the multi-cultural approach to representations of ''race'' are also prominently featured in the exhibition. They include Nancy Burson, Nikki S. Lee, Glenn Ligon, Paul Pfeiffer, Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, and Andres Serrano, among many more.

Other photographers represented in Only Skin Deep, such as Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, O. Winston Link, Man Ray, and F. Holland Day, may not be known as commentators on race but nonetheless created works that speak about it. The exhibition raises crucial questions as well about how ideas of race permeate culture, through a variety of images from the realms of abstraction, landscape photography and photo documentation of land art—genres in which the figure is not central or even visible.

Only Skin Deep: The Central Theme
Engaging some of the most profound and explosive issues in contemporary life, this exhibition explores how photography has shaped Americans' understanding of nation, race, ethnicity, and self. Even as symbols, photographs depicting ethnic difference and cultural superiority have real consequences in everyday life.

Co-curator Coco Fusco remarks in her essay: ''The photographic image plays a central role in American culture. American are avid producers and consumers of photographs and as our culture shifts from being predominantly print-based to image-based, we grow increasingly reliant on photographs for information about histories and realities that we do not experience directly. But we also create and use photography to see ourselves. By looking at pictures we imagine that we can know who we are and who we were... No other means of representing human likeness has been used more systematically to describe and formulate American identity than photography.'' By examining from a perspective that neither accuses nor valorizes, but rather studies their social impact, Only Skin Deep explores ways in which photographs make cultural classifications visible, understandable and useful.

As an inquiry into racial and ethnic imagery as opposed to one that examines racism, Only Skin Deep features works that evoke popularly held ideas about race—regardless of the intent of the photographers who took them. Further, this exhibition moves beyond considering race in terms of black versus white by including representations of most ethnic groups in the United States, and, in particular, breaks new ground by considering the myriad depictions of white Americans.

As Brian Wallis, Director of Exhibitions and Chief Curator at ICP and co-curator of Only Skin Deep, explains, ''...race and nation—and, indeed, photography itself—are fictions, cultural constructions that shape our social interactions. If photographs are not inherently truthful representations of identity, but must be read to find their meaning, can a different reading of these images break down their distorting stereotypes? This is the central question posed by Only Skin Deep.''

Arranged into five thematic groups, Only Skin Deep shows how racial imagery is organized in binary terms: normal vs. abnormal, order vs. disorder, beauty vs. ugliness, mind vs. body, individual vs. type and progress vs. backwardness. These oppositions are enforced by some of the exhibiting photographers and subverted by others. The themes are:

* Looking Up/Looking Down demonstrates how racial hierarchies can be either based in truth or subverted through irony and parody. Some of the subjects in this section have been denigrated while others are idealized by the photographers.
* All for One/One for All presents photographs that suggest an ''ideal'' American, while others represent specific ethnic or racial types.
* Humanized/Fetishized contrasts photographs designed to emphasize a subject's uniqueness with those that objectify and dehumanize it. Some images in this group express their ideas about race through the depiction of space and objects rather than human beings.
* Assimilate/Impersonate compares subjects who are represented as good candidates for assimilation with those who emulate the characteristics of non-white racial groups.
* Progress/Regress focuses on how some images of racial groups represent America's future while others evoke its pre-industrial past. Featured in this section of the exhibition are images that extend the theme beyond the body into space and illustrates how racial ideas can be imposed onto natural and man-made landscapes.

Only Skin Deep: The Traveling Exhibition
Following its opening at the International Center of Photography, Only Skin Deep will be on view at the Seattle Art Museum from March 25 – June 13, 2004. Additional exhibition venues will be announced.

Only Skin Deep: The Website
The museum exhibition will be complemented by Only Skin Deep Online, an extensive website whose centerpiece is an online exhibition featuring nearly 200 contemporary artists working with issues that address race and cultural identity in this country. A national survey, this component of the project includes artists from all 50 states and Puerto Rico and includes art photography, reportage and documentary photography, and multi-media works that incorporate photography. Showcased within the website will be six commissioned Net Art projects by established and emerging new media artists, including Keith + Mendi Obadike, Prema Murthy, Heidi Kumao, Tana Gargest, and Tamiko Thiel.

Only Skin Deep: The Curators
This exhibition is organized by Brian Wallis, ICP Director of Exhibitions and Chief Curator, and Coco Fusco, an interdisciplinary artist, critic and Associate Professor in the Visual Arts Division at Columbia University's School of the Arts. Former ICP Assistant Curator Cynthia Fredette curated the online component and the national survey of the project.

Only Skin Deep: The Exhibition Catalogue
Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self will be co-published by ICP/Abrams in December 2003 to coincide with the exhibition's opening. The fully illustrated, 416-page catalogue edited by Brian Wallis and Coco Fusco, the exhibition's co-curators, contains essays by scholars, artists' statements, brief biographies of the artists and extensive bibliographic data.

Only Skin Deep: Public Programs
On Saturday, February 7, 2004, a symposium on racial representation in photography will be held at Columbia University. The event will be co-sponsored by ICP and Columbia's School of the Arts, The Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and The Center for Law and Society.

Additional programs will include artists' lectures, book signings and gallery talks. ICP will provide Only Skin Deep tools to teachers in digital format, which will be available through the website. A handbook to the exhibition and a family guide will be available.

Only Skin Deep: Sponsors
Only Skin Deep is a Millennium Project supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts with major funding provided by Corbis, Altria Group, Inc., The Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation, and additional support from Samuel L. and Dominique Milbank and from the Third Millennium Foundation.

This exhibition is one of only 12 national Millennium Projects selected by the National Endowment for the Arts as ''the very best in the performing, visual and literary arts to benefit all Americans.''

International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas @ 43rd St. New York, NY 10036

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