Ken Gonzales-Day's interdisciplinary and conceptually grounded projects consider the history of photography, the construction of race, and the limits of representational systems ranging from the lynching photograph to museum display.
The Erased Lynching series (2002-ongoing) seeks to reveal that racially motivated lynching and vigilantism was a more widespread practice in the American West than was believed, and that in California, the majority of lynchings were perpetrated against Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans; and that more Latinos were lynched in California than were persons of any other race or ethnicity.
The images derive from appropriated lynching postcards and archival materials in which the lynch victim and the ropes have all been removed; a conceptual gesture intended to direct the viewers attention, not upon the lifeless body of lynch victim, but upon the mechanisms of lynching themselves: the crowd, the spectacle, the photographer, and even consider the impact of flash photography upon this dismal past. The perpetrators, if present, remain fully visible, jeering, laughing, or pulling at the air in a deadly pantomime. As such, this series strives to make the invisible visible.
Gonzales-Day's work appears in prominent collections such as Getty Research Institute; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Eileen Norton Harris Foundation; L'École des Beaux-Arts, Paris; and Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris; Williamson Gallery, Scripps College; Pomona College Museum of Art; City of Los Angeles. His Photo Arts Council (PAC) Prize winning book, Profiled, was published in 2011 by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).
Ken Gonzales-Day earned his MFA from the University of California, Irvine and an MA from City University of New York, New York. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, and also attended St. Luc: L'École des Arts Plastique, Liége, Belgium. He is Chair of the Art Department and Professor at Scripps College.
Text provided by Luis de Jesus, Los Angeles
Ken Gonzales-Day is represented by Luis de Jesus, Los Angeles, www.luisdejesus.com