Description

The first-ever collaboration between Shepard and the estate of legendary photographer Jim Marshall, American Civics, debuts this month! Shepard is interpreting Marshall's iconic photography from the 1960's, including images of Johnny Cash, Cesar Chavez, and Fannie Lee Chaney, with five new works, vividly depicting the humanity behind some of the country's enduring social issues: Voting Rights, Mass Incarceration, Worker's Rights, Gun Culture, and Two Americas. "In the past, I was doing Johnny Cash images for art or commercial products. In this case, Johnny Cash has a different use. It's a gateway. If you look at the images woven into the image, there's Martin Luther King's mug shot. There's the prisoner's bill of rights in the corner. There's some references to 'Public Enemy' that were [in] headlines back in Al Capone's time. But for me, it also references the [hip-hop] group Public Enemy, which has a song, 'Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos,' which is about a prison break.".