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A collaboration between Jess T. Dugan (photographer of To Survive On This Shore) and curator Charlotte Cotton, Love Pictures centers around conversations about themes informing Dugan’s practice, including gender and identity, family and politics, writing and language, relationships and community, the book as object, and the dynamics of the exhibition space.
These initial dialogues then prompted subsequent conversations with others in Dugan’s and Cotton’s respective communities: friends, colleagues, mentors, and subjects of Dugan’s work—including Dawoud Bey, Kelli Connell, Dorothy Moss, and Catherine Opie, among others. Transcriptions of these intimate and in-depth exchanges are woven with the first comprehensive survey of Dugan’s work in book form.
Dugan's work is in the permanent collections of over sixty museums, including the Denver Art Museum, Getty Research Institute, Harvard Art Museums, International Center of Photography, Leslie/Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
About the author
Jess T. Dugan (b. 1986, they/them, lives in St. Louis) is an artist whose work explores identity and the complexities of the human condition. While their practice is centered around photography, it also includes writing, video, audio, drawing, and installation. Their work is regularly exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collections of over sixty museums.
Charlotte Cotton (b. 1970, lives in London) is a curator and writer who explores photographic culture. She has held positions at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Photographers’ Gallery, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Katonah Museum of Art, International Center of Photography, and California Museum of Photography. Her book,
The Photograph as Contemporary Art, has been published in ten languages and has been a key text in charting the rise of photography as an undisputed art form in this century.
Groundbreaking artist and MacArthur Fellow
Dawoud Bey (b. 1953, lives in New York) examines the Black past and present. Bey began his career as a photographer in 1975 with Harlem, U.S.A, a photographic series that was exhibited to critical acclaim beginning in 1979. His work has since been the subject of numerous major exhibitions throughout the US and Europe, with works held in numerous public collections.
Kelli Connell's (b. 1974, lives in Chicago) practice investigates sexuality, gender, identity and photographer-sitter relationships. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Museum (CA), Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Dallas Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography (IL).
Dorothy Moss is curator of painting and sculpture at the National Portrait Gallery and coordinating curator of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative. Moss also directs the National Portrait Gallery’s triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. Prior to joining the National Portrait Gallery, Moss worked at the National Portrait Gallery and the Luce Foundation Center for American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Catherine Opie (b. 1961, lives and works in Los Angeles) investigates the ways in which photographs both document and give voice to social phenomena in America today, registering people’s attitudes and relationships to themselves and others, and the ways in which they occupy the landscape. At the core of her investigations are perplexing questions about relationships to community. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (NY), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (NY), Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Orange County Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art (NY), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (AR), Nevada Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Hood Museum of Art (NH), Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Seattle Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and National Portrait Gallery (London), among others.
