Abstract: Lisa Sutcliffe is Curator of Photography at the Milwaukee Art Museum, where she is overseeing the reinstallation of the collection in the Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts. She organized Postcards from America: Milwaukee in 2013 and is currently at work on an exhibition of the work of Penelope Umbrico for 2016. Rich and Poor, by Jim Goldberg, deconstructs the underlying American cultural mythology and the ways in which opposing social and economic classes approach their own self-presentation: one openly and one with strict control. The original paperback edition (Random House, 1985), long out of print, presented blackand-white portraits paired with each subject’s handwritten statement. When this work was first begun in San Francisco in 1977, Goldberg hoped that his pictures might effect social change; in the afterword to the original publication, Goldberg explained that he wanted “to try somehow to help change the world as I saw it.” A new edition of these photographs of class division made between 1977 and 1984 was published in 2014 by Steidl. In the intervening years, Goldberg has developed a more complex visual language, which he employs to push the documentary style towards a more personal expression. The new edition is densely layered in both form and meaning, incorporating multiple formats, variation in scale, and references to process that were not evident in the first edition. The revised publication does not overly complicate the deceptively simple format of the original, but instead interweaves contextual photographs that suggest a more nuanced analysis of the American value system. These additions affect the pacing, rhythm and content so that Goldberg’s voice—and his awareness of his subjective role—resonates as strongly as those of his subjects. A new afterword allows the artist to share the fate of a few of his subjects, the ways in which the city has changed, and his own understanding of how the project has aged. Because the clean and straightforward organization of the first edition provided a powerful series of contrasts, many elements remain unchanged. The book remains divided in two parts, the first presenting portraits of poor residents of welfare hotels on San Francisco’s Mission Street, and the second, portraits of the city’s Photography & Culture
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-05-04
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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