Identity/alterity re-de-constructed in repetition and difference

This essay offers a close reading of Verdi Yahooda's work Photo Booth Classic (1974–present), its presentation as artists’ pages in n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal, 17, January 2006, and in the exhibitions Said (London: Camberwell Space, 2008) and Now! Now! In more than one place (London: Cookhouse and Triangle Space, Chelsea College of Art and Design, 2016) organized by the Black Arts and Modernism project. The differences in format and presentation over time, as well as the making of this work, as an action performed by the artist in monthly cycles over forty years, are considered in relation to other artworks, the use of documentation as medium, and questions about feminism, ethnicity and Jewishness. The aim is to move beyond the ready identification of this work as simply another example of a woman artist's performance made as if self-to-camera, or as identity politics.

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Special Issue: Rethinking British Art: Black Artists and Modernism,
June 2021