Artist Case Study 1:

Jim Goldberg

Jim Goldberg is an influential American photographer and visual storyteller best known for his intimate and socially conscious work that explores the lives of marginalized individuals. His most renowned project is Raised by Wolves (1985), which captures the lives of homeless teenagers living in the streets of San Francisco during the 1980s. This project, which blends documentary photography with personal narratives, provides a raw and empathetic look at the struggles of these youth as they navigate survival, identity, and hardship.

Jim Goldberg was born in 1953 in New York City. He grew up in a family that fostered his creative interests, particularly in the realm of visual art. Goldberg attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where he began developing his photographic style. His education there helped shape his approach to photography as a tool for social commentary and personal storytelling.

The Raised by Wolves project, which Goldberg began in the early 1980s, is perhaps his most defining work. The title refers to the metaphorical idea of teenagers being abandoned or left to fend for themselves, with little or no support from family or society. Goldberg documented the lives of homeless teenagers living in the streets of San Francisco, focusing on their struggles and resilience.

What makes Raised by Wolves unique is Goldberg’s method of combining his photographs with the teenagers’ handwritten notes, journal entries, and letters. This combination of imagery and text gives a voice to the often overlooked and voiceless subjects in his work. It also allows the viewer to connect with the teenagers on a deeper level, revealing their personal experiences, dreams, fears, and moments of vulnerability.

The project provides a window into the social issues surrounding youth homelessness, but it also humanizes these teenagers in ways that challenge stereotypical portrayals. The images show them in a range of contexts: from moments of hardship to moments of defiance and joy. The handwritten text in the margins of the photographs often reads like personal diaries, bringing an emotional depth to the narrative.

Goldberg’s work is characterized by its unflinching realism and sensitivity. He often spends extended periods with his subjects, allowing him to develop trust and access to more intimate moments. His ability to capture the humanity of his subjects, particularly those living on the margins of society, is central to his approach. The combination of photography and text creates a dialogue between the image and the narrative, emphasizing the power of storytelling.

While Raised by Wolves is Goldberg’s most famous project, his body of work spans many years and addresses various social issues, including poverty, identity, and the human condition. Throughout his career, Goldberg has used his photography to challenge the viewer’s understanding of these issues and to highlight the resilience of individuals who are often ignored or stigmatized.

Artist Case Study 2:

Jo spence

Jo Spence (1934–1992) was a pioneering British photographer and activist, renowned for her deeply personal and socially engaged photographic work. Throughout her career, Spence used photography as a tool for self-exploration, political critique, and social change, tackling issues related to class, health, gender, and identity. Her work is known for its raw, unflinching portrayal of the human condition, particularly focusing on the realities of working-class life, illness, and the body’s transformation.

Jo Spence was born on June 6, 1934, in London, England, and grew up in a working-class family. After leaving school at the age of 15, she worked in a variety of jobs, including as a secretary and in the civil service. Her early life experiences in the working-class community shaped much of her later work, particularly her interest in class-based inequalities and the way they intersected with broader social issues.

In her early career, Spence worked primarily as a commercial photographer. She was a freelance photographer for several years and gained success for her work in the fashion and portraiture genres. However, she grew disillusioned with the commercial side of photography and began to focus on personal, experimental projects that questioned the nature of photographic representation.

Jo Spence’s photographic practice was deeply tied to her personal and political beliefs. Several key themes run through her work:

1. Class and Identity: Spence’s working-class background heavily influenced her work, and much of her photography addresses issues of class, social inequality, and identity. She used her own experiences to highlight the ways in which working-class individuals are often marginalized or erased in mainstream narratives.
2. Feminism and the Body: As a feminist, Spence critiqued traditional representations of women in the media and sought to reclaim control over the representation of her own body. In projects like The Picture of Health and her later series The Body Work (1987), Spence explored the intersections of gender, health, and the medical gaze, using photography to confront the societal expectations placed on women’s bodies.
3. Autobiography and Self-Representation: Spence’s work is also highly autobiographical. She used her own body and experiences as the subject of much of her work, allowing her to explore issues of identity, health, and personal transformation. Her photography often served as a means of empowerment and resistance to the societal forces that sought to control or define her.
4. Collaborative Approach: Spence was also committed to collaborative photography. She worked with others, including marginalized communities, to create photographs that were informed by the subjects’ perspectives rather than being imposed by the photographer’s gaze. She believed that photography could be a participatory, communal experience rather than one that objectified the subject.

Artist Study 3:

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman was born on January 19, 1954, in Glens Falls, New York, United States. She was raised in a middle-class family and developed an early interest in art. Sherman attended Buffalo State College in Buffalo, New York, where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1976. It was during her time at college that she began to explore photography as a medium and began to shift her artistic focus towards conceptual photography. She was influenced by the work of photographers like Diane Arbus, whose focus on identity and unconventional portraiture was a precursor to Sherman’s own exploration of self and representation.

Sherman’s artistic breakthrough came in the late 1970s when she began creating a series of self-portraits in which she dressed up and assumed various roles, frequently using costumes, makeup, and props to create different characters. Unlike traditional portrait photography, where subjects are captured as they are, Sherman’s work questioned and deconstructed the concept of identity, with the artist becoming both the creator and the subject of her work.

In 1977, Sherman moved to New York City, where she started her career by working for magazines such as New York Magazine. She also began making experimental photography, blending traditional portraiture with art-making. Her early work is often considered a reaction against the glamorized, idealized images of women commonly portrayed in popular culture and advertising.

Cindy Sherman’s work has had a profound influence on contemporary photography and visual culture. Her focus on self-representation and the performance of identity has been pivotal in discussions of gender, identity politics, and the role of women in art. By challenging the viewer’s expectations of the female form and the role of the artist, Sherman has redefined the boundaries of portraiture.

Artist study 4:

Lorna Simpson

Lorna Simpson was born on August 28, 1960, in Brooklyn, New York, United States. She grew up in a working-class family, and her early experiences in New York City influenced her later artistic career. Simpson developed an interest in art at an early age and went on to study at The School of Visual Arts in New York City. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1983.

Afterward, Simpson attended the University of California, San Diego, where she earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in 1985. It was during her time in San Diego that Simpson began to develop her distinctive visual style, which combined photography with text, and began exploring issues of identity and race in her work.

Simpson’s work spans various mediums, including photography, video, and installations. However, she is perhaps best known for her photography and multimedia works that frequently incorporate text, which plays a significant role in shaping the meaning of her images.

In the “Wigs” series, Simpson photographed women wearing various types of wigs, each wig becoming a visual metaphor for the different ways in which Black women negotiate their identities in a society that often marginalizes them. The wigs become symbols of societal pressures to conform to specific standards of beauty and appearance, while also questioning the idea of identity as something fluid and constructed.