The black figure has always been a subject of entertainment in popular culture, as well as an image to sell things. In some ways, that’s how people relate to us—because they’ve seen us on television.
—
Derrick Adams
Judy Linn by Hilton Als
- Abel Ferrara by Liza Béar
- Mac Wellman by Linda Yablonsky
- Kelly Reichardt by Todd Haynes
- Wayne Wang by bell hooks
- Catherine Murphy by Francine Prose
- Jo Baer by Linda Boersma
- June Jordan by Josh Kuhn
- Lucie Brock-Broido by Carole Maso
- Roy Hargrove by Zoë Anglesey
Interviews
- Over and Out by Alan Scarritt
- Use Me by Elissa Schappell
- Thirty-Two Short Films about Glenn Gould by Don McKellar & François Girard
- Untitled by George Burchett
- Two Poems by James Ragan
- Two Photographs by Jeannette Montgomery Barron
- Raised by Wolves: Photographs and Documents of Runaways by Jim Goldberg
- The Affliction by Joyce Carol Oates
- Judy Linn by Hilton Als
- Walking on Air by R.S. Jones
- Overheard in the Love Hotel by Robert Polito
- Document from Bigot Hall by Steve Aylett
First Proof
- Elliott Green by Saul Ostrow
- Ena Swansea
Artists on Artists
Discover MFA Programs in Art and Writing
In her photographic work, Judy Linn records the ineffable. Her images of people, places, objects are seen through the skein of democratization. Good photographs generally deny verbalization; verbalization generally leads to sarcasm—a tone that Judy Linn’s work does not affect. To say that Judy Linn’s photographs are not literary would be a falsehood; to try and characterize what kind of literature Judy Linn’s photographs are would be a deliberate falsehood.
That the mind goes blank while standing in front of a Judy Linn image hints at one of the truths her photographs contain; to say that the mind becomes filled with words as one tries to describe what happens in a Judy Linn photograph is a truth as well. Linn’s photographs effect the mind overall. In her photographs, one sees an automobile as just an automobile. Simultaneously, one asks oneself: Am I an automobile, too?
—Hilton Als
Related
“Fotoprojecktion” of a highway and the surrounding industrial area, One Minute by Felix Stephan Huber.
Photograph of police restraining rowdy onlookers during a prize giving to President Sengh of Senegal in 1969, Frankfurt by Angela Neúke.
Three black and white photographs by Boris Smelov from the Leningrad portfolio.
Originally published in
BOMB 53,
Fall 1995
Featuring interviews with Jo Baer, June Jordan, Kelly Reichardt, Abel Ferrara, Catherine Murphy, Mac Wellman, Lucie Brock-Broido, Wayne Wang, and Roy Hargrove.
