Jeffrey Clopper (1958-1987), Untitled (woman with a silver necklace), 1985 |

Contact prints mounted on black construction paper, sheet: 7 7/8 × 7 1/2 in. (20 × 19.1 cm) |
Gift from the Trustees of the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Jack Clopper in memory of Jeffrey Clopper, (1958-1987) |
2018.15.779

Untitled (woman with a silver necklace) is a portrait comprised of thirty-five photographs of an anonymous subject. Each of the photographs is one frame from a contact sheet, which Clopper has rearranged to evoke a face. Contact sheets contain thumbnails of all the photographs on an exposed roll of film. Typically, photographers create them to select which shots to enlarge and print. But, here, Clopper uses contact prints as the substance of his work. If one looks closely at each “row”—save for the first, third, and seventh—they will see cut edges around most of the frames. The portrait thus visualizes the way in which the photographic process mediates the depiction and perception of individuals. As such, it tells us less about its ostensible subject and more about the ways in art and visual culture shaped perceptions of race, gender, and sexuality in the 1980s.