Lorna Simpson

Lorna Simpson's art school background is interesting because it contained the two photographic countercurrents of photojournalistic documentary photography as well as the critical and iconic photography of defamiliarization. Photojournalism strives for objectivity as a way of understanding the world, and its "concerned photography" tries to examine social problems from an impartial point of view. Defamiliarization on the other hand attempts to challenge conceptions of objectivity by providing critical analysis in the form of subjective personal experience. Simpson, while gaining some of the photojournalist tradition was influenced by the trend of defamiliarization and "rather than just recording reality, she wanted to investigate it, to unravel it, to interrogate it, and if possible to re-envision reality."

The way she set out to do this was through deconstruction of documentary photography, avoiding stereotypes and cliches through a critical reexamining that discarded many of its conventions. Instead, she turned to techniques used in performance art such as repetition, dialogues and monologues in order to make the images more of a work of narrative. In this way she was able to explore her personal reality, and most of her work revolves around the subject of African American identity. With the subjective techniques of narrative, she is able to challenge the limiting characterizations of African Americans imposed on them by the larger society. For example, in Gestures/Reenactments she is able to expose and critique society's views of black masculinity as being either powerless, or threatening, or both, by the inclusion of a short narrative that gives personal insight into how the subject is perceived.