Different Looks

In this essay from an exhibition catalog, the author discusses works by various artists in the exhibition within the context of the aesthetics of difference

Seeing Gray: Whiteness and the Erasure of Difference

The author, a studio artist, discusses the ambivalent representation of whiteness in several works of contemporary art

Searching for California\u27s Hang Trees

Also known as the Hang Tree Series, this was part of Ken Gonzales-Day\u27s eight year project to search for, and photograph, possible, probably, and verifiable lynching sites in California. Perhaps most significantly, his project included the discovery and documentation of over 350 cases of lynching in the state of California between 1850 and 1935. Contrary to the popular image of \u27cowboy justice\u27 and Wild West vigilantism as being an exclusively white-on-white crime, Gonzales-Day was able to document, that in California, the majority (nearly two thirds) of cases of vigilantism involved the lynching of African Americans, Native Americans, Chinese, and Latinos of Mexican and Latin American descent, but Gonzales-Day documented more than the sites themselves. He was able to prove that Mexicans and Mexican Americans were the victims of racial violence, a fact which may help to shed some light on the contemporary debates around citizenship, immigration, and the migration of persons between Mexico and the United States. The photographs are silent reminders that lynchings and other acts of racial violence were not simply part of some distant past but continue to influence California born Latinos, their families and loved ones, today as one hundred and sixty years ago

Choloborg: The Disappearance of the Latino Body

The author discusses body politics in contemporary latino/a visual culture

Distant Smiles: Painting of Yishai Jusidman

Jusidman\u27s eclectic mix of imagery spans everything from geisha and clowns to nameless psychiatric patients in Mexico City. Part of his ongoing exploration of the interrelationship between distance and presence, his work explores the in-between spaces that separate objects from their representations, For Jusidman, this discrepancy constitutes the soul of painting. It could be said that he uses paint the way others use language. His command of the grammar of painting and the vocabulary of its technique allows him to work beyond a singular style. (As might be expected, many are seduced by Jusidman\u27s Virtuosity, as an artist but also as a writer. He holds degrees from the Californfa Institute of the Arts [Bachelor of Fine Arts] and New York University [Master\u27s degree].) Though critically informed, his work relies upon traditional representational techniques that challenge conventional expectations of modernist painting. Jusidman employs those techniques to expand his critique of painting

Analytical Photography: Portraiture, From the Index to the Epidermis

The current abundance of scholarship concerning the technological development of photography has coexisted with a proportionate absence of recent critical analysis of photographic images. Given photography\u27s long-standing embrace of technological advances, even predating the portable camera or roll film, this article revisits some early uses of scientific photography in order to clarify the impact of digital technology on contemporary photographic practice. The author uses scientific photography and photographic archives as the groundwork for photographic experiments into what might be called analytical photography. This essay concludes with a reconsideration of the photographic portrait

Lynching in the West: 1850–1935

Accounts of lynching in the United States have primarily focused on violence against African Americans in the South. Ken Gonzales-Day reveals racially motivated lynching as a more widespread practice. His research uncovered 350 instances of lynching that occurred in the state of California between 1850 and 1935. The majority were perpetrated against Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans; more Latinos were lynched in California than were persons of any other race or ethnicity. An artist and writer, Gonzales-Day began this study by photographing lynching sites in order to document the absences and empty spaces that are emblematic of the forgotten history of lynching in the West. Drawing on newspaper articles, periodicals, court records, historical photographs, and souvenir postcards, he attempted to reconstruct the circumstances surrounding the lynchings that had occurred in the spaces he was photographing. The result is an unprecedented textual and visual record of a largely unacknowledged manifestation of racial violence in the United States. Including sixteen color illustrations, Lynching in the West juxtaposes Gonzales-Day’s evocative contemporary photographs of lynching sites with dozens of historical images. Gonzales-Day examines California’s history of lynching in relation to the spectrum of extra-legal vigilantism common during the nineteenth century—from vigilante committees to lynch mobs—and in relation to race-based theories of criminality. He explores the role of visual culture as well, reflecting on lynching as spectacle and the development of lynching photography. Seeking to explain why the history of lynching in the West has been obscured until now, Gonzales-Day points to popular misconceptions of frontier justice as race-neutral and to the role of the anti-lynching movement in shaping the historical record of lynching in the United States.https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_facbooks/1010/thumbnail.jp

Object Choice

Documentation of a show of work on gender and sexuality presented in the context of the "Ways in Being Gay" biennial festival. Commenting on the works by 12 artists, Day and Perchuk's essay includes references to Freud and Lacan. 3 bibl. ref