JOAN SIMON is a former Curator-at-Large of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

The first black woman to take part in the Venice Biennale, Lorna Simpson is a conceptual artist who uses her camera and words to construct new worlds and deconstruct the worlds we know. This monograph opens with her earliest documentary photographs from the late 1970s and early 1980s, many never before seen, and includes her most recent works - large-scale serigraphs on felt and a work-in-progress video installation, made in collaboration with architect David Adjaye. This book features Simpson's photo-text pieces of the mid-1980s that first brought her critical attention. Also included are stills from moving picture installations, such as Interior/Exterior and Call Waiting, The Institute, and Momentum as well as drawings related to her film and video work. Throughout the volume Simpson's questioning of representation is evident, whether it is in her moving juxtaposition of text and image, her pairing of staged self-images with their sources in found photographs, or her haunting and nostalgic video, Cloudscape and its echo in the felt work Cloud.

This comprehensive catalogue of Lorna Simpson's critically acclaimed 30-year body of work highlights her photo-text pieces as well as film and video installations to reveal how the artist explores identity, memory, gender, history, fantasy, and reality. Lorna Simpson is a conceptual artist who uses her camera and words to construct new worlds and deconstruct the worlds we know. This monograph opens with her earliest documentary photographs shot between 1978 and 1980, many never before exhibited, and includes her most recent works: large-scale serigraphs on felt and a work-in-progress video installation, Chess, in which Simpson herself, in a rare appearance in her work, recreates images discovered in an anonymous archival photo album. The book also features the photo-text pieces of the mid-1980s that first brought Simpson critical attention; stills from moving picture installations such as Interior/Exterior, Call Waiting, The Institute, and Momentum; and drawings related to her film and video work. Throughout the volume, Simpson's questioning of memory and representation is evident, whether in her moving juxtaposition of text and image, in her pairings of staged self-images with their sources in found photographs, or in her haunting video projection Cloudscape and its echo in the felt work Cloud.