Nancy Burson
Androgyny (6 men and 6 women) 1982
Cog and Dat 1983
Human Race Machine
Special Faces 1991-93
Nancy Burson is an artist/photographer who combined art and innovation in a way that challenged photographic truth using digital manipulation. She is the first person to use technology that allows you to age a person's face that law enforcement use to identity missing children and adults. She also has a human race machine that allows people to view themselves as a different race. She has many projects for example combining boys and girls faces and even animals to make one image. All of her work promotes the concept of global unity and is shown in museums and galleries internationally. She is currently teaching "vision and style" at the New York Film Academy in NYC.
I am really interested in Nancy Burson's work mainly because I am into photography and more specifically portraits. All of her work is based on the concept of global unity and it is very obvious to notice. She takes pictures of men and women and combine them and she also takes pictures of celebrities and combine them I'm guessing to play on what people think of as the most attractive human. I think even just looking at her work you can tell how much thought went into what she was doing and reading the descriptions only make it stronger. Some of her work is not as distorted and are of children whose faces are altered with diseases or other issues and ask us to reconsider what we consider to be beautiful.
I feel like her work is very simple and not as complex as other artists but I think this makes her work stronger. If she had focused on other aspects of the person rather than just the face like she usually does I don't think it would have sent the same message. I really like that her work sends a global message that I think everyone can agree with. I think her strongest work would have to be the Human Race Machine. The message that we as humans should move beyond our differences and that we are all one race, the human one, is still something that people need to realize to this day. The way she is showing this message through her artwork is very inspiring and I don't think theres anything that I dislike about her work.
Links to artworks and citations:
"cog and dat" is terrifying. thank you
ReplyDeleteThis artist was covered by a couple other students. That being said, good job digging up works like "Cog and Dat" and "Special Faces"; which were not covered by other blogs.
ReplyDeleteI really like your point about how the simplicity behind her art is what makes it so complex and maybe even controversial. It is true that her art forces us to think about what "beauty" really is.
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