File:Joe Ray Untitled 1970-2.jpg

Photographs by Joe Ray, Untitled (detail) (thirty-one gelatin-silver prints; overall size, 52" x 52", 1970–2. Collection of LACMA). The image illustrates a key early body of work in Joe Ray's career from the 1970s: his documentary-like photographic series and performance-related projects (often documented in photographs and video), which explored artistic and cultural identity. This image illustrates his candid, documentary-like portraits, here of children, adults, shotgun houses and streets in his Louisiana hometown. The full work consists of 31 black-and-white, gelatin-silver prints, which conveyed his feeling about the neighborhood and its life, while charting the scope of his own trajectory over time and place. This work was publicly exhibited in prominent exhibitions, discussed in art journals and press publications, and acquired by a major museum.

Artist Joe Ray. Copyright held by the artist.

Joe Ray (artist)

Detail

Yes

The image serves an informational and educational purpose as the primary means of illustrating a key body of work in Joe Ray's career from the 1970s, when he produced documentary-like photographic series and performance-related projects involving collaborative scenarios and staged live events often documented in photographs and video. These works explored artistic and cultural identity and stood in contrast to his abstract resin sculpture of the time. Curators situate his 1970s photography among California artists drawn to recording daily urban life and its sometimes-uneasy relationships; his performance projects generally took on a more humorous, fantasy tone, sometimes examining popular clichés about contemporary artists or enacting outlandish stunts. Because the article is about an artist and his work, the omission of the image would significantly limit a reader's understanding and ability to understand this major body of work, which brought Ray later recognition through museum exhibitions and acquisitions, public exhibitions and coverage by major critics and publications. Ray's work of this type and this series is discussed in the article and by critics cited in the article.

There is no free equivalent of this or any other of this series by Joe Ray, so the image cannot be replaced by a free image.

The image will not affect the value of the original work or limit the copyright holder's rights or ability to distribute the original due to its low resolution and the general working of the art market, which values the actual work of art. Because of the low resolution, illegal copies could not be made.