Joyce Neimanas 1975

This black and white photograph of Joyce Neimanas, holding a baseball bat while wearing a baseball cap, was created by Mike Mandel sometime in the 1970s. The 1970s saw a flourishing of conceptual art practices using photography. Mandel's work, like that of his peers, frequently questioned the status of the photographic image as a supposedly objective document. "Joyce Neimanas" seems to adopt the visual language of a baseball trading card. In so doing, it draws on the social history of baseball as a popular, largely male, sport that generates its own forms of celebrity. The picture playfully challenges gender roles by presenting the female subject, Neimanas, in this context. It invites the viewer to consider the politics of imagery and the social conditions that determine what kinds of images are produced, collected, and circulated through institutions. To understand this picture better, one might research the history of baseball cards or look into the broader conceptual photography scene of the 1970s. The meaning of art is contingent on these kinds of social and institutional contexts.