Asma Naeem is curator of prints, drawings, and media arts at the National Portrait Gallery. Penley Knipe is the Philip and Lynn Straus Senior Conservator of Works of Art on Paper at the Harvard Art Museums. Alexander Nemerov is the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Stanford University. Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw is associate professor of American art at the University of Pennsylvania. Anne Verplanck is associate professor of American studies and humanities at Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg.
Black Out explores the history and resurgence of the silhouette in America, and traces its political, social, and artisanal roots. Unfolding the silhouette's paradoxes and complexities, this book presents groundbreaking work on silhouettes, including essentially unknown artists, significant original content, and revelatory interpretations. --Jennifer L. Roberts, author of Transporting Visions: The Movement of Images in Early America Black Out . . . does the interesting work of considering the history and meaning of the evocative and possibly insidious outlined form. . . . [I]t is the older images that stand out as the most interesting. Less familiar to a majority of readers, the historical context of their creation is particularly rich. . . . In the end, it is the silhouette's many oppositions and ambiguities that make it so compelling.---Hannah Stamler, Brooklyn Rail