Carrie Yamaoka

Critics PageJuly/August 2022

Reimagining Whiteness

Carrie Yamaoka, Another Country, 1991. Unique chemically altered gelatin silver print. 20 x 24 inches; 22.3125 x 26.375 inches (framed). Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Courtesy the artist.

This is from a series I was working on in the early 1990s—re-reading, re-writing, re-working books that had been banned from import into the US or banned from school libraries. I shot portions of the books on a copy camera with black and white film and then worked back into the gelatin silver prints, using reducing agents to chemically (partially) erase and edit them. This one is from Another Country by James Baldwin.

Carrie Yamaoka is a visual artist working in New York City. She is also a founding member of the queer art collective fierce pussy.