Jackie Nickerson: Salvage

Portraits that explore how environmental and economic circumstances shape people's lives

American-born British artist Jackie Nickerson (born 1960) began photographing Zimbabwean farmworkers in 1996. Her first series of these portraits served to change the perception that those who work in African agriculture are disempowered, unmodern people by highlighting their individual personalities through their handmade clothing. Ever since, she has continued in the vein of portraiture as a tool for social awareness, with a particular emphasis on global labor practices and agriculture. Her recent series Salvage interrogates the homogeneity of the artistic conventions, such as balance, likeness, proportion and scale, that characterize the portrait genre. In contrast to these expectations, Nickerson's photography engages both her subjects and her viewers with light, airy color palettes and nontraditional framing, sometimes obscuring her sitters' faces to imply anonymity within a larger system or otherwise photographing them from a low angle to emphasize their authority within the image's frame.