Maurice Berger’s monthly column, “Race Stories,” for the Lens Blog of the New York Times explored the relationship of photography to concepts, themes, and social or regional issues about race not usually covered in the mainstream media. He wrote about Robert Frank, focusing on contact sheets, notes, and shooting scripts for a two-part essay on Frank’s representations of race in The Americans. He also wrote essays exploring parallel developments in African American, Latino/a, and Asian American photo-based art and photography from the 1950s to the present, focusing on the ways this work has challenged stereotypes and prevailing ideas about identity.
Maurice Berger’s writings on contemporary art, film, and the politics and culture of race in America appeared in many journals and newspapers, including Artforum, Art in America, the Village Voice, October, Pen America, Wired, and the Los Angeles Times. Berger’s essay series, “Race Stories,” appeared monthly on the Lens Blog of the New York Times. His exhibitions include For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights, and he is the author of eleven books, including the critically acclaimed White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). He was research professor and chief curator at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and consulting curator at the Jewish Museum in New York.