Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist; her work is mainly black and white photographs collaged together with typed captions with red, black of white text bars that generally state something ironic to do with various topics such as religion, stereotypes and greed.

She first developed a liking to graphic design when she attended Syracuse University in 1964 and after a year she began studying at Parsons School of Design in New York. In 1966 she started working at Condé Nast Publications where she worked her way up the ladder from entry-level designer for Mademoiselle magazine to head designer in about a year. She then worked on layouts, book cover designs and picture editing for various publications.

Feeling her artwork wasn’t getting her feelings across well enough she moved on to teaching at the University of California for four years.

In 1977 she started taking and manipulating black and white photographs, adding her own captions. However in 1979 she moved from taking and manipulating her own photographs to use found images, usually from American media, but still adding her own captions to get various points across either about the government or American culture.

She has produced at least 43 catchy captioned artworks, some of which have been sold on bags, key rings, T-shirts and other merchandise that Kruger herself governs.

You can read through her full biography at http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/feminist/Barbara-Kruger.html