Aug 7 2018 | By Alexxa Gotthardt for Artsy
This Photographer Is Reimagining Norman Rockwell For The 21st Century
Above: Maggie Meiners, Dream Act, 2016. © Maggie Meiners. Courtesy of the artist.
In 1964, Norman Rockwell’s Civil Rights-era painting The Problem We All Live With depicted Ruby Bridges, the 6-year-old black girl who entered an all-white school in 1960, walking between deputy U.S. marshals with volleyed tomatoes and a racial slur staining the wall behind her. In 2015, artist Maggie Meiners reimagined the famous composition to explore the plight of another youth: this time, a Dreamer—a child of undocumented immigrants given temporary protection under the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
In the photo, which she titled Dream Act (2015), Meiners directed actors and models to depict the scene of a young immigrant girl, standing alone and surrounded by a squadron of U.S. border-patrol agents. While Meiners created the image three years ago, it found new relevance under the current U.S. administration’s “Zero Tolerance” policy, enacted this spring, which resulted in immigrant children being separated from their parents at the U.S. border.
Dream Act wasn’t Meiners’s first Rockwell-inspired work. The artist has long been fascinated by the painter’s depictions of 20th-century American life, which charmed and shocked millions in the mid-1900s, and their power to adeptly illustrate an entire era.
Freedom from Want. © Maggie Meiners. Courtesy of the artist.
Skin Deep. © Maggie Meiners. Courtesy of the artist.
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