Sammy, Atlantic City, photo by Will Steacy, courtesy the artist.

Photography as a medium has always been actively concerned with describing identity. While a portrait is typically an artistic representation of a person where verisimilitude is the goal, here the inquiry is questioned and expanded. Rather than employing a camera to create an objective document, the artists in this exhibition are often involved in constructing narrative sequences that pose questions with open-ended outcomes. As the title, The Truth is Not in the Mirror… suggests, photography has the power to imply, construct, and/or deny a narrative. Many of the photographers are contemporary story tellers and, in this sense, their work reflects facets of our ever-changing precepts about family, identity, truth and fiction.

The artists in the exhibition: Tina Barney, Claire Beckett, Valerie Belin, Dawoud Bey, Jesse Burke, Kelli Connell, Michael Corridore, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Rineke Dijkstra, Jason Florio, Andy Freeberg, Lee Friedlander, David Hockney, Nikki S. Lee, Graham Miller, Martin Parr, Thomas Ruff, The Sartorialist, Alec Soth, Larry Sultan, Mickalene Thomas and Aperture Commissioned Green Cart artists LaToya Ruby Frazier and Will Steacy.

Wednesday, March 30 Lecture – Photographers LaToya Ruby Frazier and Jesse Burke  6 p.m.

Wednesday, March 9 Lecture – Photographers Kelli Connell and Will Steacy 6pm

Exhibition on view through May 22, 2011

Haggerty Museum of Art,
Marquette University 13th and Clybourn streets

Photo copyright Stephen Shames

Aperture exhibition The Black Panthers: Making Sense of History, Photographs by Stephen Shames opens August 25th at The Haggerty Museum.

During the height of the Black Panthers party, from 1967 through 1973, Stephen Shames photographed daily operations, capturing the group’s public face as well as behind the scenes moments. His close friendship with the panthers, Bobby Seale in particular, allowed Shames unprecedented access and his photographs provide a rare and dynamic look at the social movement. A selection of this work was collected in the acclaimed Aperture monograph The Black Panthers (Aperture, 2006) and the exhibition The Black Panthers: Making Sense of History brings together silver gelatin prints from this historically invaluable body of work.

The Black Panthers: Making Sense of History
Photographs by Stephen Shames
Wednesday, August 25, 2010-Sunday, January 2, 2011

Haggerty Museum of Art
Marquette University
13th and Clybourn
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
(414) 288-1669