Steidl Assembly

Assembly is a sweeping overview of Jackie Nickerson’s photography over the last three decades, tracing her fascination with identity and the physical and psychic spaces of working environments. Assembly consists of three thematic volumes—Earth, Emerge, Circle—each comprised of different series. At the core of Earth are Nickerson’s acclaimed “Farm” portraits, showing agricultural laborers in Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa wearing self-made clothes, and suggesting how expression and improvisation shape identity. In volume two Emerge, framed by series on circus performers and the streetscapes of Shanghai, is “Faith,” her depiction of Irish Catholic monastic life, combining portraits with images of daily rituals and communal devotion. The final and most comprehensive volume, Circle, includes “Ten Miles Round,” an exploration of farming and fishing communities in County Louth, northeast Ireland; Nickerson’s documentation of healthcare workers during the 2014 Ebola epidemic in Liberia; and “Salvage,” studio portraits in which she obstructs her sitters’ faces with “salvaged” objects including toys, flowers and packaging, to question how materiality influences one’s sense of self. Regardless of her subject and approach, Nickerson compellingly builds the fundamental inscrutability of identity into her work.