The long, slow turn into the new millennium has been an auspicious

and revealing process for Americans, an opportunity to assess the

past and a chance to imagine the future in a different way. When, in

1999, staff members frorn the International Center of Photography

began discussions with representatives frorn the National Endowment

for the Arts about how the agency's Millennium Initiative programs DI RECTO R 'S FO R EWO RD

might best evaluate contemporary visual art, the issues were both

challenging and self evident. One of the most striking features of

Arnerican culture at this historical juncture, we all agreed, is the WiIIis E. Hartshorn

profound and unresolved issue of national identity. What does it Ehrenkranz Director

mean to be an American? What are the boundaries of the nation?

Who qualifies for citizenship? Who is excluded? Central to these

questions is the troubling issue of race, the aspect of national identity

that continues to defy explanation and to incite divisiveness. Despite

the regular media claims that we have moved beyond race or that

shifting demographics have made the concept irrelevant, ongoing

political and social clashes attest to the contrary. If race is a myth,

it remains an explosive one.

It was, therefore, with a mix of humility and ambition that we

initially formulated the concept for Onfy Skin Deep: Changing Visions

oi the American Seli. The goal of this ambitious project is to challenge

some of the central myths or preconceptions governing American

identity. In particular, this book-and the exhibition and website it

accompanies-aims to show how fluctuating conceptions of race,

nation, and self have been fixed or transformed through the unique

attributes and strateqic uses of photography. What the curators pro-

pose here is, in effect, a different reading of the archive of historical

and contemporary photographs, not one that accuses 01' valorizes but

one that studies the deep and lasting social impact of photographic

representations. It is entirely appropriate that the International Center

of Photography, with its long history of political engagement through

"concerned photography," should attempt this task. For this project

is above all a political one, one that asks each reader and each viewer

to question her or his own identity and the ways it is shaped byand

linked to wider social ideas through photography.

Clearly, such a complex intellectual investigation could not have

been possible without the advice and leadership of many individuals.

First and foremost, we must express our gratitude to the coorganizers

of this project, Brian Wallis, Director of Exhibitions and Chief Curator

at the International Center of Photography, and Coco Fusco, Associate

Professor at Columbia University, as well as a leading artist and critico

As two key voices in the cultural debates of the last decade, Wallis

and Fusco have worked together for three years to produce a thouqht-

provoking book and exhibition that will surely serve as an important

critical intervention for years to come.

An exhibition of this magnltude could have been realized without

timely logistical and financial support. In this case, we are proud to

acknowledge our partnership with the National Endowment for the

Arts, which awarded this project a generous Millennium Grant at a

crucial early stage. The Endowment's bold leadership commitment

helped to generate a number of matching grants from private donors.

We gratefully acknowledge these major sponsors: the Rockefeller

Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Altria, and Corbis, with its enlightened

commitment to expanding the public's awareness of the important role

pictures play in our culture.

Given the national scope of this exhibition, it is significant that

loans to this exhibition have come from over one hundred artists, col-

lectors, galleries, and museums throughout the country. We offer our

appreciation to those individuals and institutions that have so seltless-

Iy aided us in this undertaking; their cooperation and generosity have

been Invaluable. Finally, we at the International Center of Photography

extend our deepest gratitude to the artists and photographers included

in On/y Skin Deep. Their ideas and images give form to this project

and help us to better understand how photographs have shaped

notions of national and individual identity. It is our hope that through

On/y Skin Deep their work will stimulate a widespread and lively

conversation about what it means to be an American today.

7

Few issues are as controversial as race and nation. After years of

debate we still understand very little about how these terms of self-

definition and identity work. Their meaning seems to find its most

powerful expression in photographs. America as a safe haven for

immigrants and an Edenic paradise for pioneers and

entrepreneurs, these are images formed in our con-

sciousness through photography. Equally powerful

photographs show us a society fraught by racial conflict and

struggles to transform the social order. And even those photographs

that might appear somewhat more disassociated from social issues-

those more overtly concerned with style or with personal express ion-

can be indirectly or unintentionally inflected with racial tropes. In

this book and exhibition, we argue that race and nation-and, indeed,

photography itself-are fictions, cultural constructions that shape

our social interactions. If photographs are not inherently truthful

representations of identity, but must be read to find their meaning,

can a different reading of these images break down their distorting

stereotypes? This is the central question posed by On/y Skin Deep.

As with any undertaking of this scale, On/y Skin Deep: Changing

Visions oi the American Se/f would not have happened without the

commitment and involvement of many people. My first thanks go to

Coco Fusco, who graciously agreed to work with me as cocurator of

this exhibition Without her, the multifaceted project would not have

happened. For three years, she has pursued this task with characteristic

enthusiasm and intelligence. Her probinq research and conceptual

acumen have shaped this exhibition into one that demonstrates

surprising historical and geographical breadth, and includes objects

of remarkable aesthetic richness.

I would also like to thank the board of the International Center

of Photography, led by Raymond J. McGuire, who has unwaveringly

supported this challenging endeavor. On the staff, I particularly want

to thank Ehrenkranz Director Willis E. Hartshorn and Deputy Director

for Programs Philip S. Block, who had the audacity to conceptualize

this project in the first place and the perseverance to see it through.

Assistant Curator Cynthia Fredette worked tirelessly and with

great intellectual creativity on many aspects of project planning, and

she served as curator of the On/y Skin Deep National Survey, an online

comparuon exnibition that includes work by over 150contemporary

artists and photographers. Such exhibitions invariably involve thousands

of details to coordinate; In this case, our great curatorial assistants,

Carmen Higginbotham and Michelle-Lee White, deftly handled them.

Registrar Barbara Woytowicz skillfully managed the loan and care

of works from other collections; curatorial assistant Cynthia Young

CURATORS'ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Brian Wallis

Director 01 Exhibitions and Chiel Curator,

International Center 01 Photography

Coco Fusco

Associate Prolessor, Columbia University

Curator, International Center 01 Photography

8

coordinated loans from the Permanent CollectlOn of the Internatlonal

Center of Photography; and curatorial assistant Vanessa Rocco

organized the exhibition tour and many other complicated aspects

of the project.

Additional staff members at the International Center of Photography

who were instrumental to the realization of On/y Skin Deep include:

Steve Rooney, Deputy Director for Finance; Annie LaRock, Deputy

Director for External Affairs; Mackarness Goode, Deputy Director

for External Affairs; Marie Spiller, Director of Development; Amy

Poueymirou, Associate Director of Development; Phyllis Levine, Director

of Communications; Suzanne Nicholas, Associate Director of Education;

and Lacy Austin, Coordinator of Community Programs.

Publications Coordinator Karen Hansgen heroically engineered

the complex production of this book, with the able assistance of Erin

Barnett and Nola Tully.We are also grateful to ICP's editor Marion Kocot

and to designer Bethany Johns for her extraordinary book designo Our

deepest thanks go to editor Deborah Aaronson at Harry N. Abrams

for the dedication she brought to this publication. And, of course, we

thank all the authors whose writings in this book have strengthened

the project as a scholarly intervention in the field of visual cultural

studies by opening up new questions and areas of analysis.

Many of the authors in this book were part of the On/y Skin Deep

advisory team, who generously provided insights, contacts, and

wonderful suggestlons for photographic works to see. For their critica'

insights and support, we express our deep appreciation to the On/y

Skin Deep Advisory Committee, chaired by Merry Foresta: Maurlce

Berger, Susan Cahan, C. Ondine Chavoya, Thelma Golden, Karin Higa,

Kellie Jones, Catherine Lord, Kobena MelTer, Nicholas Mirzoeff, James

Moy, Aleta Ringlero, Caroline Vercoe, Ricardo Viera, Deborah Willis,

and Fred Wilson.

Many colleagues-curators, librarrans, archivists, scholars, arts

administrators, artists, and photographers-have generously assisted

with the many loans to this exhibition. They are thanked individually

elsewhere in this volume, but I wish to express here my deep personal

appreciation for their time and collaboration.

Finally, I wish to acknowledge with profound gratitude the invalu-

able exchanges with others that have helped me to understand how

visual culture shapes our views of people in the world. In particular,

I thank Kobena Mercer, Stuart Hall, Lucy Lippard, Thelma Golden,

Okwui Enwezor, Robln Kelley, Carol Squlers, Tricia Rose, George

Yudice, Maurice Berger, Jonathan Weinberg, Christopher Phillips,

Andrew Ross, James Clifford, Miwon Kwon, Barbara Kirschenblatt-

Gimblett, Maren Stange, Renee Green, Julie Ault, Michele Wallace,

10

Philomena Mariani, bell hooks, Allan Sekula, and Katherine

Dieckmann This project is meant as a continuation of those and

many other dialogues, and hopefully it will contribute to a deeper

understanding of our identities, our positions, our differences, and

our shared goals,-B.W.

Only Skin Deep: Changing visions o! the American Self could not have

come to fruition without the efforts of many people. I have benefited

from support from other curators, museum staff, librarians, archivists,

scholars, and artists throughout the United States. I would like to offer

special thanks to the staff of the International Center of Photography,

particularly to curatorial assistants Carmen Higglnbotham and

Michelle.Lee White, I would also like to thank my research assistants:

Marcial GodoyAnativia, Marisol Martinez, Claire Tancons, and

Alexandra Whitney, The Only Skin Deep advisory team, C. Ondine

Chavoya, Karin Higa, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Aleta Ringlera, and Deborah

WiIIIS, has generously provided insights, contacts, and made wonderful

suggestions of photographic works, The essayists who have contributed

original texts to the catalogue have strengthened the project as a

scholarly intervention In the field of visual cultural studies. I am also

greatly indebted to scholars James Faris, Lucy Lippard, Kellie Jones,

Patricia Johnston, Jane Desmond, Lynn Davis, and Benito Vergara,

And without the astute professional advice from Thelma Golden

and Okwui Enwezor, I would not have been capable of envisioning

aventure of this nature and scale

The research for this exhibition took me on the road all over the

United States and Puerto Rico to public and private collections I was

helped along the way by numerous people who took interest in Only

Skin Deep and graciously led me to crucial materials and rasources.

I would like to thank Carol Johnson at the Library of Congress, Paula

Richardson Fleming and Jeanie Sklar at the National Anthropological

Archives, Chester Cowan at the Oklahoma Historical Society, Carolyn

Davis at Syracuse Uriiver sit y's Department of Special Collections,

Becky Simmons, Joseph Struble, and Rachel Stuhlman at the George

Eastman House, DeSoto Brown and Deanne DuPont at the Bishop

Museum, Robert Spindler at the Arizona State University Library,

Kathleen Hubehschmidt at the Arizona State Museum, Susan

Sheehan at the Arizona Historlcal Society, Tricia Loscher at the Heard

Museum, Beth Ann Guynn at the Getty Research Institute for the

History of Art and the Humanities, Robert Sobieszek at the Los

Angeles County Museum, Therese Babineau at the Phoebe A, Hearst

Museum of Anthraplogy, Melissa Rountree at the Hallmark Collection,

Joseph Traugott at the Museum of New Mexico, Arthur Olivas at the

Palace of the Governors In Santa Fe, Dlane Blrd at the Museum of

Indian Arts and Culture, Steve Thomas at the California Museum of

Photography, and Harry Persaud atThe British Museum's Department

of Ethnography. In Puerto Rico, I was assisted by Manmar Benitez,

Haydee Venegas, Mercedes Trelles, and Michelle Marxuach, and in

Hawaii, by Gaye Chan.

Many of the ideas in this project emerged from a course I taught

at the Tyler School of Art for five years called "Art, Race and the

American Experience." I am grateful to my students there, whose

questions and comments helped me to clarify my own thoughts on

a complicated subject. I began working on the exhibition while I

was on a junior faculty research leave from Temple University. loffer

my special thanks to Rochelle Toner and Stanley Whitney for their

constant support durinq my tenure at Tyler, and to Bruce Ferguson,

Janet Wolff, Gary Okihiro, Farah Jasmine Griffin, and Kendall Thomas

at Columbia University, whel"e I now teach, for their encouragement

and assistance.

My own curiosity about America's colonial archive was sparked

by studying with Mary Pratt at Stanford University and subsequently

nourished through dialogues with many artists and writers. Nearly

two decades of invaluable conversations and collaborations with

Black Brltlsh colleagues Isaac Julien, John Akomfrah, Lina Gopaul,

Pervaiz Khan, Martina Attile, David Bailey, Kobena Mercer and Stuart

Hall have contributed to the development of a critical framework for

understanding the images in the exhibition. I have also benefited

immeasurably from more recent conversations with Ricardo Dominguez,

Jennifer Gonzlez, Lisa Nakamura, and Maria Fernandez.

Thanks to the generous resources provided by this project's many

funders, partlcularly the National Endowment for the Arts, I was able

to engage in extensiva primary research that would otherwise have

been beyond my reach. More than any other venture I have been

involved with, this exhibition has shown me how and why entire fields

of inquiry go untouched, even though the need to broaden our under-

standing of American culture is widely recognized. My greatest hope

for this projsct is that it can provide a resource for current and future

students of American culture and photography.-c.F.

11