Prima Facie: The Photograph, the Unphotographed, and the Boston School

Abstract

As much as the name the Boston School would suggest photographers with common content and form, this essay acknowledges, from the outset, as much disparity as similarity between 4 of its famous members: Mark Morrisroe, Jack Pierson, Nan Goldin, and Philip-Lorca diCorcia. Indeed, disparity and contingency may characterize not only their affiliation but also their photographic strategy as they document vulnerable queer populations beginning in the late 1970s. However, by, first, tracing out their attitude toward photography, and, second, by defining their long-term relationship to the communities they would portray, this essay proposes that the photograph in these oeuvres becomes something between a living document and a mortified image of an irretrievable past. Instead, this work might diagram a complex relationship between the surface of something (the “first blush” alluded to in “prima facie”) and the life, and lives, that pulse, supposedly, beneath.