Who are you? SAM photo exhibit probes questions of race and identity

By Tyrone Beason
Seattle Times staff reporter

	Images in the “Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self” exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum include a Time magazine cover from fall 1993.
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But "Only Skin Deep," a powerful photography exhibit opening today at the Seattle Art Museum, begs to differ.

For better or worse, each image describes what it means to be an American.

Dozens of art photographs, documentary images, protest snapshots, advertisements and even some postcards are used to explore how depictions of racial and ethnic groups from the 19th century to today influence the way Americans see themselves and their fellow citizens.

With Carrie Mae Weems' empathetic reproductions of slave daguerreotypes, Andres Serrano's stark portrait of a Ku Klux Klansman and Cindy Sherman's campy portraits of herself made over as a black woman, "Only Skin Deep" offers a jarring survey of American photography.

Exhibit preview "Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self," runs today through June 13 at Seattle Art Museum, 100 University Way. Tickets: $7 adults; $5 students, people over 62 and children 7 to 12. Children 6 and younger free. For more details, call 206-654-3100. Seattle Art Museum will hold a forum on race featuring Portland-born, African-American photographer Carrie Mae Weems at 7 p.m. April 26 in the museum's Plestcheeff Auditorium. Museum admission is required for entry to the lecture.

With photographs by other heavyweights such as Man Ray, Robert Mapplethorpe and Gordon Parks, it's a rich and diverse collection, first organized and put on display at the International Center of Photography in New York.

The idea, according to SAM's modern- and contemporary-art curator Lisa Corrin, is to use repulsion, humor, irony and up-close realism to shake loose the viewer's ideas about race and American identity.

Corrin acknowledges that "Only Skin Deep," while impressive in scope and quality, is a gamble for SAM. It will test the public's willingness to pay for an in-your-face, soul-searching museum experience.

From Vanessa Beecroft's disarmingly monochromatic portrait of Navy SEALs in white uniforms, to images of black demonstrators being water-cannoned in 1960s Birmingham, Ala., to a bitterly funny grid of 24 snapshots featuring all the Asian people artist Roger Shimomura has been mistaken for, the exhibit is bound to provoke mixed emotions.

	"American Gothic" by Gordon Parks

Over the past few years, and with a $1 million grant from the Wallace Foundation, SAM has attempted to add edge and cultural depth to its offerings in hopes of making the museum more thorough and relevant for local audiences.

Exhibitions comparing Pakistani and Indian art and installations by Korean artist Do-Hoh Suh fit this strategy and show the promise of the approach.

"The museum is actively shaping its artistic program not just with a view toward diversity but also to challenge our visitors and their assumptions about history," Corrin said.

"Only Skin Deep" is the culmination of that effort and one of the most important shows SAM has ever brought to Seattle, Corrin said.

In the case of "Only Skin Deep," SAM wants visitors to probe some intriguing and timely yet difficult questions: In a country undergoing profound demographic change, what does an American look like? Whose depictions are more honest? And what does my reaction to those images say about my values?

"Images are powerful things, and they shape the way we think," Corrin said. "And in a culture where images are prolific, they shape our thinking every minute — we internalize what we see."

	"La Guadalupana" by Delilah Montoya

The exhibit is designed to make people more "self-conscious" when viewing images they may have seen in other contexts, whether strolling through another museum or flipping through a magazine.

Here, the photographs are arranged in striking juxtapositions in rooms based on five themes: "Looking Up/Looking Down," "All for One/One for All," "Humanized/Fetishized," "Assimilate/Impersonate" and "Progress/Regress."

What are we to think when passing an image of Korean photographer Nikki S. Lee posing like a faithful girlfriend beside a white guy holding a rifle, with his Confederate flag hanging on the wall behind them?

How do self-portraits of Lyle Ashton Harris, an African-American man, dressed in white face and blond wig, relate to Mapplethorpe's image of a black man draped in an animal skin?

How should we react to a huge self-portrait of Catherine Opie, a lesbian photographer, who has a scene of female stick figures holding hands in domestic bliss scratched into the skin on her back?

In images like these, "the artists are delivering the message of what it's like to be in their shoes," Corrin said. "There's anger, there's self-mocking and there's pathos."

	"The Ohio Project" by Nikki S. Lee

But what is the unspoken message of Man Ray's elegant 1926 image of a white woman holding a carved African mask?

Does its value change because it's featured in the same exhibit as images of primitive-looking black and Native American women and a snapshot of a protester ranting at the U.S.-Mexico border with a sign that reads, "Control Immigration or Lose America"?

"Only Skin Deep" provides more questions than answers. Very little text accompanies the images, leaving the door open for the viewer to muse over the photographers' intentions. Are the images the products of genuine insights or base fantasies and misconceptions?

"It's as much about the subjectivity of the photographer as the subjectivity of the viewer," Corrin said.

But "we're not passing judgment on these images," she cautioned. "What we're saying is these images exist as part of our cultural history. Why do these images exist?"

	Patty Chang's image "Contortion" is part of the "Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self" exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum.

Dorothea Lange's 1936 "Migrant Mother" portrait seems more meaningful now that we know the woman in the photograph isn't a poor, white Oklahoma or Appalachian woman, as originally thought, but a Cherokee whose people had been displaced by the U.S. government.

"History is always writing and rewriting itself, and this exhibition reflects that process," Corrin said.

Corrin stressed that "Only Skin Deep" is not a photography-bashing exercise. Many images in the show, in fact, have inspired people to fight social ills and stereotypes.

Gordon Parks' breakthrough portrait of an African-American woman posing stoically in front of the U.S. flag — with a mop in one hand and a broom in the other — poignantly calls on the viewer to confront America's uneven distribution of rights and opportunities.

Ed Greevy's snapshot of Hawaiian nationalist Haunani-Kay Trask with her fist clenched in the air offers a stirring counterpoint to photos of docile, exotic Pacific Islanders.

Robert Mapplethorpe's image of a nude black man engaged in an erotic but loving embrace with a nude white figure challenges the viewer's racial attitudes, as well as ideas about masculinity.

Some of the photos in the exhibit only hint at what it is, or isn't, to be American. Images by Masumi Hayashi, for example, show the abandoned foundations of a Japanese relocation camp.

The show, with its eclectic spirit, confronts viewers with overwhelming force. It's likely to get under many people's skin, and perhaps go much deeper.

Tyrone Beason: 206-464-2251 or tbeason@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company