Michael Simon 1975

"Michael Simon," a 1975 work by Mike Mandel, is a black and white photographic portrait of a man wearing a baseball cap. This work belongs to the genre of conceptual photography, and the artist has created a piece that appears to be a snapshot of a man, but also evokes a sense of constructedness. The image is cropped to frame only the head and shoulders of the man, and the inscription below his name suggests it is a portrait of a subject, but without any context for the viewer, it becomes a meditation on the nature of representation and the relationship between artist and subject.