Glenn Ligon is a conceptual artist who chooses to create work in black and white as a way of pointing directly at racial stereotypes and expectations; at the same time it is a refusal to let his self-portraits be "colored." In limiting his palette or restricting his photographs, Ligon reminds us of the polarized race relations that still plague the United States -- one hundred-fifty years after the abolition of slavery.

Glenn Ligon
Self Portraits, 1996
10 images, each 48 x 40 inches
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Self-Portraits, 1996.
Installation view, "Glenn Ligon: New Work,"
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.