RECOMMENDED Gonzo photographic anthropologist and adventuress Zana Briski spent six years in the notorious brothels of Calcutta and came out with brutal black-and-white photos that radiate a raw energy and dynamism lacking in Mary Ellen Mark’s more sedate and humanistic series on the same subject. Briski wants to show it as she sees it going down, as when we look at a man bending over a prostitute, grasping her head and kissing her as she lies on a cot in a squalid room—his face is fully visible in profile and shows determined intensity, whereas hers is completely obscured by his hands. Indeed, unlike Mark, Briski does not introduce us to her subjects as individuals; it is what they are doing that tells the story, rather than whom we might believe they are under a portraitist’s lens. (Michael Weinstein) Through October 27 at STEPHEN DAITER GALLERY.
Lost in Translation: A Review of Crip* at Gallery 400 The strongest works in the exhibition succinctly express the ways the artist relates to their own body while calling out how the artist’s body and body of work has been perceived or coded against norms or ideals.
Repurposing AI: A Review of Stephanie Dinkins at Stamps Gallery While this show is timely for everyone, I consider its setting within a university art gallery and emerging tech hub like the city of Ann Arbor a subversive provocation which Dinkins invites the greater public—including members of the university community—to consider our own positionality to AI and technology.
