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The photographer Joy Gregory was born in Britain to Jamaican parents. She studied at the Royal College of Art, London, and has exhibited internationally, including in Cape Town, South Africa, where she first showed her series Lost Histories, which reflected on colonization and its effects on culture and self-image. Gregory’s practice constitutes a penetrating investigation of issues of race, gender, and personal and cultural identity, while her visual language, as she has noted, "resides within a traditional aesthetic of truth and beauty." The artist has an eclectic technical repertoire, ranging from Victorian print processes to digital imaging. First published in 1990, Autoportrait originally consisted of a series of self-portrait silver prints that existed only in an edition of two, but Gregory later had the original photographs scanned and the portfolio was republished in 2006 as a series of giclée prints.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016