Sophie Hackett – författare

Brings together a wealth of research and an expansive selection of photographs to create an enduring account of America's first known trans network, Casa Susanna. In the 1950s and 60s, an underground network of transgender women and cross-dressing men found refuge at a modest house in the Catskills region of New York. Known as Casa Susanna, the house provided a safe place to express their true selves and live for a few days as they had always dreamed - dressed as and living as women without fear of being incarcerated or institutionalized for their self-expression. This book opens up that now-lost world. The photographs - mostly discovered by chance in a New York flea market in 2004 - chronicle the experiences of men who dressed as women, gender nonconforming people, and transwomen in states of relaxation, experimentation, connection and joy. All of this was made possible by Susanna Valenti who - on her own journey toward womanhood - created Casa Susanna, a protected space where others could crossdress and live freely as women. Supplementing the images are excerpts from Transvestia, a magazine that allowed those who had been cast out by a rigidly binary society to connect in a different medium. The people who came to Casa Susanna found a spot where they could explore and celebrate their own and each other’s femininity, as they could not do elsewhere. Their creations are also a reminder that there were, and still are, many ways to explore the boundaries of gender.

A richly illustrated presentation of the creative career of the acclaimed portraitist, documentarian and experimentalist frequently found in the pages of Life, Look and Harper's BazaarPublished with Art Gallery of Ontario and Museum Hanmi.American photographer Arnold Newman (1918–2006) is best known for his compelling portraits of artists, composers, actors and political figures of the postwar era. Newman's deliberately constructed compositions express biography, creative vision and professional expertise. By building each image and methodically planning his photoshoots, he developed a graphic visual style that was well suited to popular magazines, such as Life, Look, Fortune, Holiday and Harper's Bazaar.This book considers the full breadth of Newman's photographic practice, including his magazine commissions and advertisements, and highlights the crucial role magazines played in shaping his career. In three major illustrated sections, the authors explore the ways that Newman learned through magazines; how his career was propelled by magazine commissions during the 1950s and 1960s; and how mass media publications circulated his work and cemented his reputation. The photographs reveal Newman's many influences and chart his considerable impact on American visual culture. Tracing Arnold Newman's relationship with and within the popular press expands our understanding of his work, reveals the inventiveness of his craft and underscores his undeniable impact on American visual culture in the postwar period.

Marking the 25th anniversary of the Art Gallery of Ontario’s photography department, Collective States explores the museum’s rich history with the medium, the origins of its permanent photography collection, and the AGO’s evolving engagement with the art form. Focusing on the evolution of the act of collecting at the AGO since the department’s creation at the outset of the 21st century, this book includes the work of early innovators, 20th-century trailblazers, and contemporary artists, as well as significant collections of 20th-century press photographs, pop photographica, and photographic albums. Featuring over 200 images in five thematic sections, Collective States blends works made across time and place to reveal the rich and versatile uses and approaches to the medium. With a diverse range of artworks, and insightful essays by the AGO’s current curator of photography, Sophie Hackett, and the department’s founding curator, Maia-Mari Sutnik, the book explores the indispensable role photography plays in contemporary visual culture and the advent of galleries, magazines, and festivals that explored the photographic form over the last 50 years.

This powerful collection highlights the importance of snapshots in Black American life: as tools to challenge stereotypes, and as a way to document family and culturePublished with Art Gallery of Ontario.Thoughtfully illustrated, this volume highlights a selection of photographs of African American family life between the 1970s and the early 2000s—pictures that were lost by their original owners and then found by the artist Zun Lee on a street in Detroit in 2012, marking the beginning of the Fade Resistance collection of more than 4,000 Polaroids. Lee describes the collection as an important record of Black visual self-representation and a means to “reflect the way Black people saw themselves on their terms—without the intention of being seen, or judged, by others.” To Lee, these powerful photographs are an expression of "Black life mattering."These vivid images chronicle milestones such as weddings, birthdays and graduations, as well as quiet daily moments, offering contemporary views long ignored or erased by mainstream culture. Together, these works highlight the role snapshots have played in Black life, as tools to challenge stereotypical portrayals and as a means to memorialize family, culture and heritage.Topics such as self-representation, visual history and the social power of photographs are addressed in critical texts by Sophie Hackett, Stefano Harney, Zun Lee and Fred Moten, and an original contribution by celebrated poet Dawn Lundy Martin.