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 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.
In a 1999 conversation with Chuck Close, reproduced in Excessive Exposure: The Complete Chocolate Portraits, Lyle Ashton Harris says, "I'm attracted to my subjects in a lot of different ways: in relationship to form, to power, to desire, and in relationship to the transgression of class. For me the process of portraiture is a way of negotiating intimacy." Featured Polaroids from the Chocolate Portraits series are of artists Kehinde Wiley and Shirin Neshat.
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FROM THE BOOK
"In a way, Harris' subjects are not so much sitting for the photographer as they are auditioning for our approval. This is striking, because portraits are usually deployed to act on the idea of imparting an individuality that reaches down to reveal the very soul of the sitter. Or so the legend goes. In this legend, portraits are often said to be used to gain the viewer's trust, empathy, and recognition. We can see why they are perfect for publicity and propaganda, and for manufacturing image cults. Harris seems disinclined to have his portraits function in this way, however. Strangely, they appear drier, less emotional connected to any specific individual. Each portrait of the subjects thus emerges to us, first on a superficial level, as the corroborated façade, but as the resemblance that both identifies and disidentifies."
FORMAT: Hbk, 10 x 11.75 in. / 344 pgs / 350 color / 10 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $75.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $99 GBP £65.00 ISBN: 9780974364872 PUBLISHER: Gregory R. Miller & Co. AVAILABLE: 10/31/2010 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Lyle Ashton Harris: Excessive Exposure The Complete Chocolate Portraits
Published by Gregory R. Miller & Co.. 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 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.
