Lorna Simpson

In this essay, Okwui Enwezor, gets into an in-depth description and analysis of Lorna Simpson’s work. She was most concerned with “historical” truth in which the Enwezor says, “those images calcified like plaque in the social unconscious.” This is a great statement because it allows for an abstract concept to be understood through the process of correlation (“…calcified like plaque…”). Enwezor then gets into a lengthy discussion about race in her photography, in which I lost some interest.

Although there are many elements of Simpsons work to be considered, I found it most interesting that Simpson connected language with her photography. The purpose this serves is to get across a specific idea to the reader, and help to encode how the author meant for the message to be interpreted, triggering a memory, and yet still leaving the completion of the interpretation to the viewer. By using this technique, her images are regarded as a conceptual framework for photography. I really liked that she used this technique of “linguistic signs” in her work, because not only are the photographs interesting in enough, there is also more to look for in figuring out what a photo represents.

It is interesting to see that during the 1960s photography was one of the main methods for recording, documenting, and witnessing the subjective realm of art in which the products thereof served as a reminder. This method of recording of oneself brought about a philosophical journey of self-knowledge. The work of Simpson is something that I have not seen before and for me, reaches beyond the common artistic purpose of photography.