Barbara Kruger is an American artist known for her conceptual collage works combining photographs with text. She was born in 1945 in New Jersey and studied at Syracuse University and Parson's School of Design. Kruger began her career designing advertisements but later began incorporating found images with text that commented on or subverted the original message. In 1976, she took a break from artmaking and moved to California, returning to create montages that combined photos she took of homes with accompanying narratives. Kruger's work focuses on appropriating recognizable images and adding accusatory or anonymous text to critique the visual message and explore themes of politics, feminism, and the construction of identities.

1. Barbara Kruger Speaking the Truth into Pictures

2. Background http://caraphillips.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/04189-bk.jpg

3. Growing up & starting out Born 1945 in Newark New Jersey Only child Attended Syracuse University & Parson’s School of design, where she studied with Diane Arbus

4. Artistic Journey Started designing ads for Mademoiselle Magazine at 22, promoted to head design within one year First art exhibited work was fiber arts, “women’s work” Became involved in New York poetry scene, publishing and performing her work in poetic society

5. Moving towards montage... 1976: Left New York loft for California, where she stopped all artmaking for one full year “ [I was trying to] rethink my connections to my work, to the art world, and most importantly, to the games and relations that congeal, disperse and make the world go round.”

6. When Kruger returned to her work, she took up the camera, capturing images of California residences, which she published with accompanying narratives written about the people living there.

7. The Work

8. Stealing images to tell the Truth Work in fashion provided the skills for choosing and cropping images while also providing fodder for a mission in dispelling lies visual media passes off for reality

9. Kruger’s work focuses on taking well-recognized images and adding text with an accusatory “you” or non-identified pronouns as commentary on the original visual message

13. Themes Politics Feminism Commodity Fetish Rhetoric of realism

20. “ I’m interested in how identities are constructed, how stereotypes are formed, how narratives sort of congeal and become history.”