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“The photograph offers a kind of unexpected intimacy.”
— Katy Grannan


“It’s important that the photograph describes a particular subject, but it also has to speak to something much larger,
so that the viewer has the sense of a shared history; they’re portraits of all of us.”
— Katy Grannan

“I wanted to remove them from context almost like an abstraction.
You didn’t need to know where they lived—it wasn’t about that—it was really all about the person.”
— Katy Grannan

“…that work was kind of scary and shocking to me when I first spread it out to look at it… I remember thinking,
I have either got to burn all the negatives and shoot myself, or go down to LA and try and get it published.”
— Larry Clark

Larry Clark, Tulsa (1980)
50 hand printed gelatin silver prints
framed, ea: 16 5/8 x 12 1/4 x 1 3/8 in. (42.2 x 31.1 x 3.5 cm)

“…the damaged works make a statement in and of themselves. It’s a different statement than the original intent of the work,
but now the work has been transformed and politicized.”
— Andres Serrano

In 2007 during Serrano’s solo exhibition at Kulturen in Lund, Sweden, these photos were attacked with axes and crowbars by vandals believed to be part of a neo-Nazi group.

“The best artistic intentions are usually cloaked in mysteries and contradictions.
It wouldn’t be interesting for me if the art were not “loaded” in some way.”
— Andres Serrano

In a 2011 group exhibition at Collection Lambert in Avignon, France,
vandals smashed through an additional layer of protective plexiglass
screen with a hammer and slashed Piss Christ (Immersions) photo with another sharp object.

“I wouldn’t get in bed with the devil,
but I would certainly take the devil’s picture if he let me.”
— Andres Serrano

“I feel an affinity with many religious artists of the past.
You have to see my work in that context.
At the same time, I’m a contemporary artist.
Contemporary artists often use unorthodox materials and ideas in their work.”
— Andres Serrano

“It was a spiritual quest…
I always felt they were alive in some way.
There was a soul to each individual.”
— Andres Serrano

“But if I were to ask,
‘What have we learned about torture?’…
I’d have to say we haven’t learned anything at all.”
— Andres Serrano

“The circumstances of making my photographs are, in a way,
almost more important than the pictures themselves.”
— Katy Grannan

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