Ghosts : seventy portraits

Published in honor of the exhibition, "Hung Liu: Portraits of Promised Lands," held at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., August 27, 2021 - May 30, 2022.

"Chinese-born painter Hung Liu is perhaps best known for her portraits, all taken from historical black-and-white photographs. Her subjects over the years have included children, refugees, street performers, prostitutes, soldiers, laborers, and prisoners. More recently, Liu has shifted her focus from Chinese to American subjects, including displaced individuals and wandering families of the American Dustbowl, inspired by the iconic photographs of Dorothea Lange. It is as if she had summoned ghosts from history into the present moment. In recognition of the 2021 retrospective of Liu's portrait-based paintings at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Kelly's Cove Press is pleased to publish seventy reproductions of Liu's portraits in this volume"--Back cover.