Naomi White
- Michael Hanna
- Apr 22
- 2 min read
Updated: Apr 27
Naomi White is a conceptual photographer and collage artist who has exhibited throughout the United States, and in Melbourne, Alberta and the UK. She has participated in art auctions with the prestigious David Zwirner Gallery in New York and is represented by the Contemporary Art Modern Projects in Miami. Notable exhibitions include art fairs Scope, Spectrum, Kolajfest, and Photo LA. Her work has been published in The Hopper Prize, Cut Me Up Magazine, FAYN, PDN, Red Canary, The Brooklyn Rail, and Uncertain States. White has lectured on her work at the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Center for Ethics at Cal Poly Pomona, Santa Monica City College, and UCLA. Naomi is currently Associate Professor of photography at the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles.
The photographic assemblages, collages, and photographs touch upon a wide range of subjects such as feminism, environmentalism, eroticism, and capitalism. Naomi’s newer works tend to represent assemblages while her older archived portfolio contains her conceptual photography. Often chaotic and containing tears and burns, the photographic assemblages range from Naomi collaging her own photographs to integrating vintage, found imagery. One subject which seems to be prevalent throughout her work would be her depictions of plastic. The discarded, garbage plastic becomes assembled into abstract installations to photograph or are photographed and superimposed upon images of landscapes, as if they were a haunting cloud menacing the globe. Naomi’s works dealing with eroticism employ collages of vintage imagery which become blotted out with streaks of photographic color, as if the figures do not really exist and are an apparition of themselves.
These chaotic compositions with the recent assemblages are a mix of symbolic images such as marginalized communities, polluted environments, and dealing with issues of pregnancy as well as the sustenance of life. Her works are rather mysterious and complex and require a good amount of study in order to deconstruct the symbolism and metaphor between the reassembled imagery. Her older photographic works represent isolation and solace, typically dealing with interior environments or yards of a home with figures or objects representing and interacting with each other in a manner which conveys the nihilism of suburbia.
Luxury of Choice # 1 (pictured above) represents a cynical depiction of a pregnant woman superimposed with a cow in an assemblage. The torn aspects of the composition represent an uncompromising position and interpretation of society viewing women as mere vessels or even cattle to carry offspring. The piece reflects a sense of liberation and defiance against what Naomi perceives to be the subjugation and persuasion of women to carry out unwanted pregnancies.
Naomi White remains a dynamic artist who addresses a multitude of pressing social issues which directly reflect the contemporary age. Her integrative approach as well as uncompromising compositions reflect deep connotations with subjects such as the fragility of the environment and women’s issues. The tears and burns of her photographic assemblages as well as the raw subject matter of her conceptual photography reveals an uncompromising artist willing to take on the most pressing matters of our times.
