Me as Marilyn, 1991. Ming Smith is releasing her first collection of NFTs entitled “Caravan”this Wednesday, June 15, at 6:30pm ET on @niftygateway Nifty Gateway! The drop will consist of three open editions that will be available for 24 hours, and one limited edition of 10. Don't miss your chance to be a part of this historical moment in photography! Smith’s self-portraits through the years evince a preoccupation with the constructs of femininity, the gaze, race, color, and beauty. In “Me as Marilyn” (1991), for example, she dolls herself up in a brassy Marilyn Monroe wig, tempting the viewer by thrusting her chest out while wearing a seductive, if somewhat blank, expression. Smith, who often used hand coloring, in addition to collage and overpainting techniques in her work, tinted the Marilyn image with red, pink, and light and dark blues; Smith’s skin tone appears as a dark rose, complicating our racial reading. It could be seen as a race-conscious translation of Andy Warhol’s “Marilyn Monroe” (1967) or of the theatrical self-portraiture of Smith’s contemporary Cindy Sherman. Although Sherman’s playacting highlights gendered stereotypes, Smith’s bravura gesture presses a hot lamp to the ways in which whiteness shapes the desirability and reception of women, evoking not only her own quandaries but those of minority female beauties of Monroe’s time, from Dolores del Río to Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, and Rita Hayworth. -Yxta Maya Murray #nft #photography #artist