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Collage of five diverse artworks from the Hammer Museum Collections side by side. From left to right: 1) Contemporary painting of two embracing figures with surreal elements. 2) Post-impressionist style painting of trees with vibrant blues and greens. 3) Black and white illustration of a face with intricate patterns. 4) Japanese woodblock print style image of a figure in a checkered robe. 5) Photograph of a couple dancing, the woman in a black dress and the man in white

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Digital Archive Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology
Art Martha Rosler, The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems
The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems, by Martha Rosler, 1974–75

Martha Rosler, Artist
The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems , 1974–75

Medium
45 black-and-white photographs and 3 black panels mounted on 24 black mat boards
Dimensions
Photographs, 8 x 10 in. (20.3 x 25.4 cm) each
Credit Line
Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell Innes & Nash. Installation view, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; image courtesy of the artist and Mitchell Innes & Nash

By addressing questions of how to represent dimensions of social class yet refusing the visual and verbal tropes of vagrancy and poverty, this work points to the tendency of documentary photography to generalize, criminalize, or victimize. By showing us a doorway that a homeless person may have adopted for shelter or an empty whiskey bottle paired with a series of vernacular terms related to alcoholism, Rosler highlights what she calls the "poverty of representation" offered by the "two inadequate descriptive systems" of the work's title.