Erica Uhlenbeck

Erica Uhlenbeck (1947, Jakarta) studied sculpture at the San Francisco Art Institute and subsequently did a master’s degree in photography there in the late 1970s.
Between 1982 and 1992 she lived and worked mainly in Amsterdam. At the time she made “constructed photography”, related to other artists such as Henk Tas and Teun Hocks, in which photography is a means in a multimedia artwork in which painting and collage also play a role.

Back in the United States, in New York City, Uhlenbeck focused on portraying school children. In doing so, she was initially interested in the contrast between, and the irony of, social privilege and the reality of the powerlessness of young people in general and especially that of African American and Hispanic boys and girls in American society.
Their portraits were printed along with photographed historical picture frames from museum collections, as a gesture of reversal.
Soon the portraits were less constructed, like the three works of The Hague University of Applied Sciences. That makes them very direct, as if you were there yourself.