Lyle Ashton Harris

"I'm interested in exploring the body as a site of both pain and pleasure in all of its ambivalence. I'm engaged in a democratization of the subject matter—equivalence, if you will—whether it's photographing Agnes Gund's granddaughter Sadie or Mystery, who dances for a dollar to make his living."
Lyle Ashton Harris, in conversation with Chuck Close, excerpted from Excessive Exposure: The Complete Chocolate Portraits.

MONOGRAPHS & CATALOGS

Lyle Ashton Harris: Excessive Exposure Text by Okwui Enwezor. Foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Interview with Chuck Close. Excessive Exposure documents all the chocolate-colored portraits that Bronx-born artist Lyle Ashton Harris made with a large-format Polaroid camera over the past ten years. This sequence of approximately 200 paired front
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GREGORY R. MILLER & CO.
ISBN: 9780974364872
$75.00 | In stock

Lyle Ashton Harris Essay by Anna Deavere Smith. Known for self-portraits which explore issues of performance, identity, family, gender, masculinity and race, Lyle Ashton Harris here presents a new series featuring himself in a variety of loaded guises: Billie
go to book page >>
GREGORY R. MILLER & CO.
ISBN: 9780974364803
$19.95 | Awaiting stock

Lyle Ashton Harris

Featured Polaroids, "Kara Walker (Front & Back)," are reproduced from Excessive Exposure: The Complete Chocolate Portraits, in which Okwui Enwezor writes, "In 1998, Harris began the Polaroid portrait project that culminated with portraits made in 2008. The project comprises nearly 200 images made over more than a decade. While Harris did not completely deny or eradicate the faces of the subjects—by splitting them between revealed and concealed, front and back—he transformed them into provisional vehicles of pictorial uncertainty."

Lyle Ashton Harris: Excessive Exposure

The Complete Chocolate Portraits

Text by Okwui Enwezor. Foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Interview with Chuck Close.
Published by Gregory R. Miller & Co.

Excessive Exposure documents all the chocolate-colored portraits that Bronx-born artist Lyle Ashton Harris made with a large-format Polaroid camera over the past ten years. This sequence of approximately 200 paired front and back portraits, for which Harris has become so well known, has now come to a close, making this volume the definitive publication on the series. The portraits' subjects include Harris' family and friends, art-world personalities, noted cultural figures, celebrities and politicians. These images are further distinguished by a strategic blurring of conventional gender roles, sexual identities and racial categories, and by a refined use of light and shade. Okwui Enwezor contributes an essay analyzing Harris' portraits, situating these works in the context of the artist's work of the past 20 years, as well as in the broader history of the genre. The book also includes a conversation between Harris and artist Chuck Close that took place in 1999, when Harris was beginning the series. With a penetrating foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Excessive Exposure offers a wealth of superb portraiture and is destined to become a touchstone volume among photo-books.

Lyle Ashton Harris

Essay by Anna Deavere Smith.
Published by Gregory R. Miller & Co.

Known for self-portraits which explore issues of performance, identity, family, gender, masculinity and race, Lyle Ashton Harris here presents a new series featuring himself in a variety of loaded guises: Billie Holiday, Josephine Baker and the “Boxer.” Anna Deavere Smith's essay powerfully explores her relationship to the photographs and the artist.