About the Exhibition
Leslie Lyons’ photo series Talking Back: An Exhibition of T-Shirt Messages and The Bodies Who Wear Them explores the dynamics of personal expression and society’s response to our media-driven culture. T-shirt messaging is sometimes subtle and at other times in your face, but nevertheless offers a fascinating insight into the personality of the individual and trends in contemporary culture.
Featured in conjunction with Creating Identity: Portraits Today, Talking Back looks to the viewer’s unique statement as representation of self. As the current exhibition reveals the different forms of portraiture from representation to conceptual, Talking Back focuses on what identity or statement is revealed from a simple piece of clothing – a form of expression that provides an insight into the individual wearer and perhaps the shared ideas that the message represents.
Traveling from the Art Director’s Club in New York City, the exhibition features individuals from cities across the United States: New York, New Orleans, Austin, Los Angeles, and Louisville – taken during the on-site photo shoot at 21c in late September in conjunction with the Idea Festival 2009.
About the Artist
Leslie Lyons is a Louisville-based photographer and creator of the ongoing project I Live In Louisville. Lyons’ work has been featured inNerve/The New Nude published by Chronicle Books and recently The Strip Flips series (Anna, George, Susan, Lyle) published by Power House Books.
