Printed by the artist or under his direct supervision from the original negative. Image size is 39.8 x 47.5 inches (101.1 x 120.7 cm). Sheet size is 42.5 x 50 inches (108 x 127 cm).

James Casebere was born in 1953, in Lansing, Michigan. He attended Michigan State University, and graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1976 where he studied with the sculptor Siah Armajani. In the fall of 1977, he attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York, and then moved to Los Angeles where he studied with John Baldessari and Doug Huebler. He received an M.F.A from Cal Arts in 1979.

Casebere's work has established him at the forefront of artists working with constructed photography. His first exhibitions in New York were at Artists Space, Franklin Furnace and then Sonnebend Gallery. His work was associated with the “Pictures Generation” of “post-modern” artists who emerged in the 1980’s. For the last thirty years Casebere has consistently devised increasingly complex models and photographed them in his studio. His table-sized constructions are made of simple materials, pared down to essential forms. Casebere also made large scale sculpture installations.

Early bodies of work focused on images of the suburban home, followed by both photographs and sculptural installations dealing with the myth of the American West. In the early 1990s, Casebere turned his attention to the development of different cultural institutions during the Enlightenment, and their representation as architectural types. With his photographs of prisons in particular, he critically addressed contemporary attitudes and approaches to incarceration, as well as metaphorically pointing to relationships of social control, and social structure in the broader society.

Since the late 1990s he has made images whose sources span the globe starting with the bunker under the Reichstag (Flooded Hallway), and the sewers in Berlin (Two Tunnels). He created a body of work referencing the Atlantic slave trade, including a slave factory in West Africa (Four Flooded Arches), plantations in the West Indies (Nevision Underground), Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and other 18th century American colonial architecture. The modern architects Victor Horta and Richard Neutra inspired him to create another small, austere group of works that seem to cast a critical eye on the homogenizing effects of globalization.

After 9/11 Casebere turned his attention toward Spain and the Eastern Mediterranean. Several works examine 10th century Andalusia and the flowering of culture and co-operation between Islamic, Jewish and Christian cultures before the Inquisition (La Alberca, Abadia, Spanish Bath, Mahgreb). Other images depict Tripoli, Lebanon, Nineveh and Samara in Iraq, and Luxor, Egypt. Several photographs of models of mosques were inspired by the 16th century Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan.

Casebere is the recipient of numerous fellowships including three from the National Endowment for the Arts, three from the New York Foundation for the Arts and one from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Casebere lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, with his wife Lorna Simpson and their daughter Zora. [jamescasebere]