Photography is at its best when it becomes more than just the thing photographed. Jackie Nickerson gives us both photograph as human sculpture and a faceless portrait of the thankless tasks preformed by the farm workers of Zimbabwe; which then becomes a metaphor for the invisible workers everywhere who provide the modern world with all its material desires. See this incredible series: TERRAIN
TERRAIN
JANUARY 16 – FEBRUARY 15, 2014 @ JACK SHAINMAN GALLERY
513 WEST 20TH STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10011
“Jackie Nickerson began photographing Zimbabwean farm workers in 1996 as a way to change the perception that those who work in African agriculture are dis-empowered, un-modern people. The resulting series, Farm, focused on the unique and beautiful clothing the workers made for themselves, and by doing so highlighted the worker’s identity, individuality, and ultimately their modernism.
This was published by Jonathan Cape in September 2002. German edition, ‘Leben Mit Der Erde’, published by Frederking and Thaler, 2002; French edition, ‘Une Autre Afrique’, published by Flammarion 2002.
For her most recent series, TERRAIN, Nickerson turns her attention to the roles in which workers play in the production and commodification of agricultural goods. TERRAIN focuses on the synergy between cultivation, workers and the environment, employing a reduced artistic language to draw attention to important debates around crop specialization, subsistence farming and food security.
Nickerson was born in Boston, USA in 1960 and divides her time between Ireland and southern Africa. Her work is held in many important private and public collections and has been exhibited in venues which include the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, Salzburg; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; National Portrait Gallery, London and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.”
She is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York.
Exhibition: Jackie Nickerson Photographs
