Professor Charlie White’s Photography Discussed in Jonathan Griffin Essay

Posted on April 1, 2017

Professor White’s work is discussed in critic Jonathan Griffin’s essay titled “Father Figure”, which focuses on contemporary artist’s response to modernism’s idealization of children and childhood.

Giffin writes, “The work is not so much about the raw, messy and confusing experience of fatherhood as it is the raw, messy and confusing experience of historical cultural dominance by white, Western, male figures, as perceived by white, Western men in the present day. All these artists have chosen to reckon with their own implication in the ignoble histories they have inherited. In doing so, they cast themselves both as victims and aggressors. There are generational differences in their approaches, however; whereas Kelley, McCarthy and Jackson hurl themselves, abjectly, into the depths of their own Ids, Kersels and White remain more circumspect, analyzing their anxieties about adulthood rather than wallowing in them.” Full Essay