Art News

Photographic Portraits of People Opens at Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art

DURHAM, N.C.- An exhibition featuring more than 100 original photographic portraits of people of color opened yesterday at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. The exhibition, “Becoming: Photographs from the Wedge Collection,” is a series of portraits taken over the past 100 years by more than 60 global artists. In some portraits, the subjects have little or no control over the way they are depicted; in others, the subjects become increasingly involved with the photographer. All of the artists reject a common tendency to view black communities in terms of conflict or stereotype. “Becoming” includes studio portraitists (Malick Sidibé, James VanDerZee), social documentarians (Milton Rogovin, Jürgen Schadeberg), conceptual artists (Hank Willis Thomas, Carrie Mae Weems) and young contemporary artists whose work is largely unknown in this country (Zanele Muholi, Viviane Sassen). The work is on loa