Understanding Joshua

Charlie White (b 1972) is a Los Angeles-based artist. While a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York, he worked as an assistant to artists Laurie Simmons and Carroll Dunham and studied with Marilyn Minter. White moved to Los Angeles in 1996 to attend the Art Center College of Design, and received his MFA in 1998. White's photographs explore America’s social fictions and collective identities. His earlier bodies of work, In a Matter of Days (1999) and Understanding Joshua (2001), were influenced by the highly staged art direction of photographers such as Jeff Wall. In 2003 White exhibited “And Jeopardize the Integrity of the Hull” (2003), a series of eleven photographs that look at religion, entertainment, privacy, and pop culture. In 2006 White exhibited "Everything is American" a series of works looking at collective trauma, national anguish. In 2008 White created a body of work titled, “Girl Studies”, the series ‘Teen and Transgender Comparative Studies’ at the 2009 Hammer Biennial and finished a series titled ‘Casting Call’ in 2010. White's body of work, titled ‘Self Portrait’, was created in 2014 and was his first time photographing staged nudes and still lives. Charlie White also contributes writings to journals and publications such as Artforum, and Words without Pictures. He is a professor at the Roski School of Art and Design, University of Southern California in Los Angeles today.