Not on view
Date
1999–2000
Classification
Photographs
Medium
Chromogenic print
Dimensions
Sheet (Sight): 47 5/8 × 67 5/8in. (121 × 171.8 cm) Image (Sight): 41 1/4 × 61 1/2in. (104.8 × 156.2 cm) Frame: 49 5/8 × 69 5/8 × 2 3/4in. (126 × 176.8 × 7 cm)
Accession number
2002.162
Edition
AP 1/2
Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Photography Committee
Rights and reproductions
© artist or artist’s estate
API
artworks/15837
Julie Moos shot the twenty-five photographs that comprise the series Friends and Enemies entirely at the Altamont School, a private school in Birmingham, Alabama. Inspired by the tragic shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado in April 1999, Moos decided to photograph the students of the class of 2000 in pairs, based on powerful bonds of friendship and enmity that she discovered over the course of several months spent analyzing the school yearbooks and interviewing guidance counselors, teachers, and the students themselves. The students did not know with whom they would be paired until the moment their portraits were taken; likewise, the viewer is not informed whether the pairs are best of friends or sworn enemies, leaving the relationships between these figures suspended in a state of ambiguity.
