kobena mercer, skin head sex thing
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Skin Head Sex Thing: Racial Difference and the. Homoerotic ImaginaryTRANSCRIPT
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The long, slow turn into the new millennium has been an auspicious
and revealing process for Americans, an opportunity to assess the
past and a chance to imagine the future in a different way. When, in
1999, staff members frorn the International Center of Photography
began discussions with representatives frorn the National Endowment
for the Arts about how the agency's Millennium Initiative programs DI RECTO R 'S FO R EWO RD
might best evaluate contemporary visual art, the issues were both
challenging and self evident. One of the most striking features of
Arnerican culture at this historical juncture, we all agreed, is the WiIIis E. Hartshorn
profound and unresolved issue of national identity. What does it Ehrenkranz Director
mean to be an American? What are the boundaries of the nation?
Who qualifies for citizenship? Who is excluded? Central to these
questions is the troubling issue of race, the aspect of national identity
that continues to defy explanation and to incite divisiveness. 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.
It was, therefore, with a mix of humility and ambition that we
initially formulated the concept for Onfy Skin Deep: Changing Visions
oi the American Seli. The goal of this ambitious project is to challenge
some of the central myths or preconceptions governing American
identity. In particular, this book-and the exhibition and website it
accompanies-aims to show how fluctuating conceptions of race,
nation, and self have been fixed or transformed through the unique
attributes and strateqic uses of photography. What the curators pro-
pose here is, in effect, a different reading of the archive of historical
and contemporary photographs, not one that accuses 01' valorizes but
one that studies the deep and lasting social impact of photographic
representations. It is entirely appropriate that the International Center
of Photography, with its long history of political engagement through
"concerned photography," should attempt this task. For this project
is above all a political one, one that asks each reader and each viewer
to question her or his own identity and the ways it is shaped byand
linked to wider social ideas through photography.
Clearly, such a complex intellectual investigation could not have
been possible without the advice and leadership of many individuals.
First and foremost, we must express our gratitude to the coorganizers
of this project, Brian Wallis, Director of Exhibitions and Chief Curator
at the International Center of Photography, and Coco Fusco, Associate
Professor at Columbia University, as well as a leading artist and critico
As two key voices in the cultural debates of the last decade, Wallis
and Fusco have worked together for three years to produce a thouqht-
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provoking book and exhibition that will surely serve as an important
critical intervention for years to come.
An exhibition of this magnltude could have been realized without
timely logistical and financial support. In this case, we are proud to
acknowledge our partnership with the National Endowment for the
Arts, which awarded this project a generous Millennium Grant at a
crucial early stage. The Endowment's bold leadership commitment
helped to generate a number of matching grants from private donors.
We gratefully acknowledge these major sponsors: the Rockefeller
Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Altria, and Corbis, with its enlightened
commitment to expanding the public's awareness of the important role
pictures play in our culture.
Given the national scope of this exhibition, it is significant that
loans to this exhibition have come from over one hundred artists, col-
lectors, galleries, and museums throughout the country. We offer our
appreciation to those individuals and institutions that have so seltless-
Iy aided us in this undertaking; their cooperation and generosity have
been Invaluable. Finally, we at the International Center of Photography
extend our deepest gratitude to the artists and photographers included
in On/y Skin Deep. Their ideas and images give form to this project
and help us to better understand how photographs have shaped
notions of national and individual identity. It is our hope that through
On/y Skin Deep their work will stimulate a widespread and lively
conversation about what it means to be an American today.
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Few issues are as controversial as race and nation. After years of
debate we still understand very little about how these terms of self-
definition and identity work. Their meaning seems to find its most
powerful expression in photographs. America as a safe haven for
immigrants and an Edenic paradise for pioneers and
entrepreneurs, these are images formed in our con-
sciousness through photography. Equally powerful
photographs show us a society fraught by racial conflict and
struggles to transform the social order. And even those photographs
that might appear somewhat more disassociated from social issues-
those more overtly concerned with style or with personal express ion-
can be indirectly or unintentionally inflected with racial tropes. In
this book and exhibition, we argue that 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 On/y Skin Deep.
As with any undertaking of this scale, On/y Skin Deep: Changing
Visions oi the American Se/f would not have happened without the
commitment and involvement of many people. My first thanks go to
Coco Fusco, who graciously agreed to work with me as cocurator of
this exhibition Without her, the multifaceted project would not have
happened. For three years, she has pursued this task with characteristic
enthusiasm and intelligence. Her probinq research and conceptual
acumen have shaped this exhibition into one that demonstrates
surprising historical and geographical breadth, and includes objects
of remarkable aesthetic richness.
I would also like to thank the board of the International Center
of Photography, led by Raymond J. McGuire, who has unwaveringly
supported this challenging endeavor. On the staff, I particularly want
to thank Ehrenkranz Director Willis E. Hartshorn and Deputy Director
for Programs Philip S. Block, who had the audacity to conceptualize
this project in the first place and the perseverance to see it through.
Assistant Curator Cynthia Fredette worked tirelessly and with
great intellectual creativity on many aspects of project planning, and
she served as curator of the On/y Skin Deep National Survey, an online
comparuon exnibition that includes work by over 150contemporary
artists and photographers. Such exhibitions invariably involve thousands
of details to coordinate; In this case, our great curatorial assistants,
Carmen Higginbotham and Michelle-Lee White, deftly handled them.
Registrar Barbara Woytowicz skillfully managed the loan and care
of works from other collections; curatorial assistant Cynthia Young
CURATORS'ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Brian Wallis
Director 01 Exhibitions and Chiel Curator,
International Center 01 Photography
Coco Fusco
Associate Prolessor, Columbia University
Curator, International Center 01 Photography
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coordinated loans from the Permanent CollectlOn of the Internatlonal
Center of Photography; and curatorial assistant Vanessa Rocco
organized the exhibition tour and many other complicated aspects
of the project.
Additional staff members at the International Center of Photography
who were instrumental to the realization of On/y Skin Deep include:
Steve Rooney, Deputy Director for Finance; Annie LaRock, Deputy
Director for External Affairs; Mackarness Goode, Deputy Director
for External Affairs; Marie Spiller, Director of Development; Amy
Poueymirou, Associate Director of Development; Phyllis Levine, Director
of Communications; Suzanne Nicholas, Associate Director of Education;
and Lacy Austin, Coordinator of Community Programs.
Publications Coordinator Karen Hansgen heroically engineered
the complex production of this book, with the able assistance of Erin
Barnett and Nola Tully.We are also grateful to ICP's editor Marion Kocot
and to designer Bethany Johns for her extraordinary book designo Our
deepest thanks go to editor Deborah Aaronson at Harry N. Abrams
for the dedication she brought to this publication. And, of course, we
thank all the authors whose writings in this book have strengthened
the project as a scholarly intervention in the field of visual cultural
studies by opening up new questions and areas of analysis.
Many of the authors in this book were part of the On/y Skin Deep
advisory team, who generously provided insights, contacts, and
wonderful suggestlons for photographic works to see. For their critica'
insights and support, we express our deep appreciation to the On/y
Skin Deep Advisory Committee, chaired by Merry Foresta: Maurlce
Berger, Susan Cahan, C. Ondine Chavoya, Thelma Golden, Karin Higa,
Kellie Jones, Catherine Lord, Kobena MelTer, Nicholas Mirzoeff, James
Moy, Aleta Ringlero, Caroline Vercoe, Ricardo Viera, Deborah Willis,
and Fred Wilson.
Many colleagues-curators, librarrans, archivists, scholars, arts
administrators, artists, and photographers-have generously assisted
with the many loans to this exhibition. They are thanked individually
elsewhere in this volume, but I wish to express here my deep personal
appreciation for their time and collaboration.
Finally, I wish to acknowledge with profound gratitude the invalu-
able exchanges with others that have helped me to understand how
visual culture shapes our views of people in the world. In particular,
I thank Kobena Mercer, Stuart Hall, Lucy Lippard, Thelma Golden,
Okwui Enwezor, Robln Kelley, Carol Squlers, Tricia Rose, George
Yudice, Maurice Berger, Jonathan Weinberg, Christopher Phillips,
Andrew Ross, James Clifford, Miwon Kwon, Barbara Kirschenblatt-
Gimblett, Maren Stange, Renee Green, Julie Ault, Michele Wallace,
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Philomena Mariani, bell hooks, Allan Sekula, and Katherine
Dieckmann This project is meant as a continuation of those and
many other dialogues, and hopefully it will contribute to a deeper
understanding of our identities, our positions, our differences, and
our shared goals,-B.W.
Only Skin Deep: Changing visions o! the American Self could not have
come to fruition without the efforts of many people. I have benefited
from support from other curators, museum staff, librarians, archivists,
scholars, and artists throughout the United States. I would like to offer
special thanks to the staff of the International Center of Photography,
particularly to curatorial assistants Carmen Higglnbotham and
Michelle.Lee White, I would also like to thank my research assistants:
Marcial GodoyAnativia, Marisol Martinez, Claire Tancons, and
Alexandra Whitney, The Only Skin Deep advisory team, C. Ondine
Chavoya, Karin Higa, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Aleta Ringlera, and Deborah
WiIIIS, has generously provided insights, contacts, and made wonderful
suggestions of photographic works, The essayists who have contributed
original texts to the catalogue have strengthened the project as a
scholarly intervention In the field of visual cultural studies. I am also
greatly indebted to scholars James Faris, Lucy Lippard, Kellie Jones,
Patricia Johnston, Jane Desmond, Lynn Davis, and Benito Vergara,
And without the astute professional advice from Thelma Golden
and Okwui Enwezor, I would not have been capable of envisioning
aventure of this nature and scale
The research for this exhibition took me on the road all over the
United States and Puerto Rico to public and private collections I was
helped along the way by numerous people who took interest in Only
Skin Deep and graciously led me to crucial materials and rasources.
I would like to thank Carol Johnson at the Library of Congress, Paula
Richardson Fleming and Jeanie Sklar at the National Anthropological
Archives, Chester Cowan at the Oklahoma Historical Society, Carolyn
Davis at Syracuse Uriiver sit y's Department of Special Collections,
Becky Simmons, Joseph Struble, and Rachel Stuhlman at the George
Eastman House, DeSoto Brown and Deanne DuPont at the Bishop
Museum, Robert Spindler at the Arizona State University Library,
Kathleen Hubehschmidt at the Arizona State Museum, Susan
Sheehan at the Arizona Historlcal Society, Tricia Loscher at the Heard
Museum, Beth Ann Guynn at the Getty Research Institute for the
History of Art and the Humanities, Robert Sobieszek at the Los
Angeles County Museum, Therese Babineau at the Phoebe A, Hearst
Museum of Anthraplogy, Melissa Rountree at the Hallmark Collection,
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Joseph Traugott at the Museum of New Mexico, Arthur Olivas at the
Palace of the Governors In Santa Fe, Dlane Blrd at the Museum of
Indian Arts and Culture, Steve Thomas at the California Museum of
Photography, and Harry Persaud atThe British Museum's Department
of Ethnography. In Puerto Rico, I was assisted by Manmar Benitez,
Haydee Venegas, Mercedes Trelles, and Michelle Marxuach, and in
Hawaii, by Gaye Chan.
Many of the ideas in this project emerged from a course I taught
at the Tyler School of Art for five years called "Art, Race and the
American Experience." I am grateful to my students there, whose
questions and comments helped me to clarify my own thoughts on
a complicated subject. I began working on the exhibition while I
was on a junior faculty research leave from Temple University. loffer
my special thanks to Rochelle Toner and Stanley Whitney for their
constant support durinq my tenure at Tyler, and to Bruce Ferguson,
Janet Wolff, Gary Okihiro, Farah Jasmine Griffin, and Kendall Thomas
at Columbia University, whel"e I now teach, for their encouragement
and assistance.
My own curiosity about America's colonial archive was sparked
by studying with Mary Pratt at Stanford University and subsequently
nourished through dialogues with many artists and writers. Nearly
two decades of invaluable conversations and collaborations with
Black Brltlsh colleagues Isaac Julien, John Akomfrah, Lina Gopaul,
Pervaiz Khan, Martina Attile, David Bailey, Kobena Mercer and Stuart
Hall have contributed to the development of a critical framework for
understanding the images in the exhibition. I have also benefited
immeasurably from more recent conversations with Ricardo Dominguez,
Jennifer Gonzlez, Lisa Nakamura, and Maria Fernandez.
Thanks to the generous resources provided by this project's many
funders, partlcularly the National Endowment for the Arts, I was able
to engage in extensiva primary research that would otherwise have
been beyond my reach. More than any other venture I have been
involved with, this exhibition has shown me how and why entire fields
of inquiry go untouched, even though the need to broaden our under-
standing of American culture is widely recognized. My greatest hope
for this projsct is that it can provide a resource for current and future
students of American culture and photography.-c.F.
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