Monsters

Over the last decade, internationally recognized artist Charlie White has created some of the most arresting and trenchant images in contemporary photography. Through an extensive process that entails casting actors, creating characters, and building sets to construct scenes both disturbing and familiar, White dissects the violence, desires, and social anxieties that trouble the American collective unconscious. 

 In series such as In a Matter of Days (1999) and Understanding Joshua (2001), White created monsters that stand as surrogates for human fragility and the internal demons that haunt our experiences of self and other. In And Jeopardize the Integrity of the Hull (2003) White's work began to critique photography’s role in popular culture by mimicking and heightening the veneer of the commercial image to reveal the tension below the gloss. White's most recent series, Everything is American (2006), reveals the violence-tinged eroticism of the American psyche through portraits of both historical and mythic figures. 

 From assaulting scenes to meditative studies, White's powerful, disturbing, and revelatory photographs create fiction to understand reality and reconsider history to critique the present—all in a delicious, candy-coated shell.