Waiting

So this whole, could give birth at any time thing is a bit of a head trip. My due date is Saturday, but technically the baby could have come any time in the last two and a half weeks or the next two and a half weeks. I’m pretty comfortable, but tired, so my days are more boring and way less productive than I’d planned for. When I was this pregnant with my son, I was going for walks and baking (and eating) cookies and cooking and freezing dinners. So far I’ve done pretty much none of that. Oh well.

Here are the last few pictures I made for my derby girls project. I hope to pick it back up again in a few months. In the meantime, I’ll turn my thinking to editing and how to integrate the other elements I’ve been collecting along the way (interiors, objects, notes and documents from the women).

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You may remember Dodge Swinger from when I first started publishing pictures from this series. (You can actually see my first print of her up her shelf, framed.) Anyways, she had a baby since then, as you can see. I was supposed to photograph her when she was heavily pregnant in February, but Ada decided to come 10 weeks early at the end of January, so I lost my chance.

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Now for a little self-promotion… I mentioned ages and ages ago that my work was going to be included in a book called The M Word: Real Mothers in Contemporary Art. It was scheduled to be available last fall, but production has been delayed. I understand it’s finally printing now, so if you’re interested in feminist art, you should order it now. I’m so delighted to have my work included in it.

Also, Foam Magazine just produced A Book of Beds, which is for sale online. It includes two of my images from Where will I spend my happy days?

Contact 2011

For the last few years, Mother’s Day for me has become pretty much synonymous with the Contact Festival. Even though I’m hugely pregnant and, in theory, could go into labour at any moment, this year was no exception. I was originally planning to see Somewhere to Disappear, the film that followed Alec Soth while he worked on Broken Manual, on Saturday afternoon, but I didn’t buy advance tickets soon enough. We were even going to wait in line for the possibility of rush tickets, but on Thursday I had a bad fall, so I was feeling a little too broken and rundown to stand in line for an hour plus in the hopes of getting a seat.

(Look: I even got a black eye. Luckily it’s not so visible when my eyes are open and with my glasses on, or I’m sure my husband would have gotten some dirty looks.)
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Anyways, we just went to a few exhibitions. I’d pored over the contact site to decide which exhibitions I most wanted to see: Viviane Sassen’s work in the primary exhibition at MOCCA and Guy Tillim’s Avenue Patrice Lumumba.

First, Viviane Sassen’s work. LOVED it. L-O-V-E-D it. I don’t quite understand it, but I love looking at it, and I think that’s part of its appeal, that these images are enigmas. I love work that goes beyond the colonialist cliches of Africa. The work is shown as part of a group show, and I liked some of the other work but not all. Sassen’s work was by far the standout for me.

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In-Moshi-VIVIANE-SASSEN-DAM

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I will say, however, that I was kind of distracted by the presentation. The images were mounted but not framed, and they were in different sizes AND hung at different heights. I’m sure there was a reason for that, but I just didn’t understand it, and I found myself wondering about that instead of wondering about the images. It looks like her book, Flamboya, uses an analogous technique with little images tucked into half pages, as you can see in this video of flipping the book. I’m beginning to think I’m developing a special taste for out of print photobooks. I would love to buy Flamboya, but it’s no longer available. The work at Contact is newer work than the book but it appears to be along the same vein.

And now, South African photographer Guy Tillim. I have to say, this solo exhibition showed a lot more pieces than I expected. There must have been 40 pieces in the show, maybe even more. And they’re pretty big pieces. Most importantly, they are beautiful.

The only downside of the show is that admission cost $10. If I’d known that in advance, I probably wouldn’t have gone but since we only discovered it when we were already there, we paid. It seems very odd to me to charge admission for an art show. Anyways, I’m glad I went, even if my bank account is smaller as a result. These were my two favourite images from the show:

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The show is put on by Wedge Curatorial Projects, which focuses on African and diasporic artists. On May 17, Kenneth Montague, the curator, will be leading a tour of the exhibition and they will be screening a film about Lumumba’s rise to power. If you’re around, you should totally check it out. The show is on until June 14.

Holy crap!

I’m one of the 2011 Flash Forward winners!

Over the years, Flash Forward has selected great photographers to be part of its annual book and exhibition – people like Donald Weber, Laura Pannack and Katrina d’Autremont, whose work I adore. This year’s list of winners has tremendous talent on it again (Ben Roberts, Kurt Tong and Matt Eich to name just a few), so I’m delighted and amazed to be on it too.

happy Easter!

I don’t know if anyone’s interested, but here are some installation shots from my show. It’s still up until May 2 at the Elora Centre for the Arts. (Ok, I promise to stop beating the dead horse now.)

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Here is some of Sophie Hogan’s beautiful work. I think our two bodies of work talked to each other in interesting ways.
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reaching the end

I think I’m reaching the end of this shooting phase of my project. I expect a new baby will slow things down in that area for a while, but also, I’m feeling a bit drained creatively. I have one more photo shoot for next week that is time-sensitive, then I think I’m going to take a break and try to recharge my creative batteries. I wonder if birthing a baby will help or hinder the recharging?

Anyways, here are a few recent images.

Stitch Ripper
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Lippy Wrongstockings (who I think has the best derby name ever, but then I’m a huge fan of Pippy Longstockings)
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I don’t know how I’m going to edit this series. Oh well… one thing at a time. Editing is still a long way off.

the opening

Thursday’s opening of my and Sophie’s show was really great. We had a great turnout, a number of derby girls showed up, and I didn’t make an ass of myself talking about my work.

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Em Pale, me, Leigh-zzie Borden and Inna’Goddesss Da-Vida – and the top of my son’s head

The curator, Phil Irish, did a sort of interview format for the artist talks, which made it really easy for me, and I suspect more engaging for the audience. I just had to answer his questions. Once upon a time, I hated talking about my work. Although I make my living with words, there’s a reason I make images; there’s something I’m trying to express that I can’t find the words for. I discovered on Thursday that now I really like talking about my work. Partly it’s experience: I have a better understanding of my own work and what’s going on in it. But it’s also partly practice. My process for this project is that I first meet the derby girl in her home. I scope out the space and light and get to know her a bit. I also tell her all about my project, why I started, what I’m hoping to do with it, things that I’m thinking about. It’s interesting because I’m coming up on a year since I started the project, and my thinking has changed and deepened over the course of the experience. I’m really starting to get the value of working on a project long-term. Your thinking changes and refines but you still have the early pictures, which may or may not fit with your later thinking.

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me talking

(I just got my hair shorn off a coupla weeks ago, and my son mostly clung to my leg while I talked. I think he was kinda proud of me. Have I mentioned I’m pregnant? I think the belly has become quite unmistakable.)

As well, both Sophie’s work and mine look pretty great on the wall, if I do say so myself. It’s so interesting that we’ve pursued our projects completely independently, but putting the work in the same room really creates a dialogue.

I didn’t really take enough pictures. I’ll have to go back and get proper installation shots another time. But the show is up until May 1 if you want to spend a bit of time in the charming village of Elora.

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gratuitous kid shot

I also have to say my son was AWESOME. We stayed until 10 pm and he behaved well the whole time. Even though for the last hour he kept asking me when we could go home, and I kept telling him, soon. Finally he says, “When’s soon going to be over?!” But no meltdowns.

details about my show

So… See you tomorrow night?
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Hard Knocks
Sophie Hogan and Kate Wilhelm

March 24 – May 1, 2011
Opening Reception – Thursday March 24, at 7:30 pm
Minarovich Gallery – Elora Centre for the Arts
Curated by Phil Irish

People are not always what they seem – and their true identities are often the reward of struggle, belonging, and even aggression.  These two photographers, Sophie Hogan and Kate Wilhelm, have each developed an interest in a subculture and, by seeking connection there, have found compelling relationships and insights about the struggles and strength of identity.

Teenagers develop the art of keeping parts of their lives secret, yet they are strikingly candid when Sophie Hogan is working her camera.  Her series Night Shots is an investigation into the sociology of teen culture, including the emotionally turbulent terrain of friendships and exclusions, love and crushes, lust and loss and “the raw energy of uncertainty of being young.”  These works are created with the co-operation, perhaps even collaboration, of a circle of teens who have accommodated Hogan into their hidden lives.  These images are not documentary in tone, but employ lighting and gesture to narrative effect, immersing us in the nocturnal emotions of adolescence.

Kate Wilhelm is hooked on roller derby, in part because it “throws the received, cultural notions of femininity in your face.”  The Derby Girls adopt performance names and wardrobes, building alternate identities as they engage in one of the few contact sports available to women.  Wilhelm’s striking portraits of Derby Girls don’t place them in the aggression of a bout, but in their private domestic spaces.  The incongruity of setting a Derby Girl persona in a quiet moment, or with family members, or nursing a baby, calls our stereotypes into question.  While these formally posed images may seem like a “scientific” catalogue of a social type, Wilhelm’s eye for suggestive detail provides a unique set of clues and questions within each portrait.  We puzzle through the clues in search of the Derby Girl’s complex identity, finding an unconventional freedom and strength in the lives these women have constructed.

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Sophie Hogan studied Photographic Arts at Ryerson.  Her practice as a portrait photographer extends into conceptually rich series, including the exhibition and book My Elora: The Grace of Belonging.  The recipient of a Canada Council Grant, she also won first prize at the Insights exhibition last year.  Her work will be featured at the Gladstone Hotel again for Contact 2011 (Toronto) in May.

Kate Wilhelm holds a B.A. from the University of Guelph.  Her work has been exhibited locally and internationally, including Mother/mother-* (New York), and New Normal (Colorado). Oshawa’s public gallery, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, will feature her work in 2012.  Wilhelm was born in 1976 and lives in Guelph, Ontario with her husband and son.

Media Contact: Arlene Saunders. 519.846.9698

Minarovich Gallery, Elora Centre for the Arts
75 Melville Street, Elora Ontario N0B 1S0
T: 519.846.9698
www.eloracentreforthearts.ca
media contact: Arlene Saunders

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday-Friday 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Weekends 1:00 pm – 3:30 pm

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I’m having a show!

If you’re in the area, come to the Elora Centre for the Arts on March 24 for the opening.
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It’s been a while since I posted new derby girl images. Here are some recent shots.

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Ginger Slaughters with her family and in her room.

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Here’s Freudian Whip
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And Cherry Paincakes
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mad at Gerry Badger

I’m mad at Gerry Badger. It’s been a few months since I read most of The Pleasures of Good Photographs, mostly cover to cover. But if anything, my anger has grown with the passage of time.

It may be my expectations were too high. I was interested in reading it when I first heard about it, but when Joerg Colberg mentioned the essay “From Diane Arbus to Cindy Sherman,” shortly after my first gender post, I felt like I had to read it.

It’s a good book. I love reading critical analyses of photography, and Badger’s writing is great. His essay, “From Diane Arbus to Cindy Sherman: An Exhibition Proposal,” is smart and insightful. He gives a brief history of the significant contribution of women to photography, from the first published photobook (not William Henry Fox Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature after all, but Anna Atkins’s Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions) to women who were at the forefront of photographic modernism (I don’t know whether to blame my ignorance or the great patriarchal eraser of art history for the fact that I haven’t heard of Germaine Krull or Florence Henri). Badger even argues that Imogen Cunningham’s nudes are better than Weston’s. The main focus of the essay is a more recent generation of American women photographers who worked from 1965 to 1985, which he describes as a lost generation, because they haven’t been given their proper due in the history of late twentieth-century photography. He names Judith Golden, Bea Nettles, Marcia Resnick, Joyce Neimanas, Susan Rankaitis, Eileen Cowin, Barbara Crane, Betty Hahn, Jo Ann Callis, Joan Lyons, Ellen Brooks, Barbara Kasten, Nancy Rexroth and Barbara Blondeau. Have you heard of any of them? I hadn’t.

Badger suggests that one of the reasons for their exclusion from the photographic canon lays at the feet of John Szrkowski, the director of the MOMA’s Department of Photography from 1962 to 1991, and his tremendous influence in the art photography world. He promoted straight, NYC-based street photography, and all the women above had more studio and darkroom-based practices elsewhere, often taking a more directorial approach. “Although male photographers, including Arthur Tress and Ralph Eugene Meatyard, for example, would arrange scenes to be photographed in the 1970s, this approach seems particularly suited to women photographers, partly because they had something specific to say – something metaphotographic, one might propose – and perhaps also because photographing outside on the street was not without its attendant dangers for a woman.”

(I just need to take a detour here and respond to Badger’s claim that photographing on the street is more dangerous for women than for men. This is flat-out wrong, and perpetuating this myth just contributes to rape culture. In fact, statistics show that men are the victims of violent crime in public far more often than women and girls. Most violence against women is perpetrated by people they know, in private spaces. Presumably Badger thinks street photography is more dangerous for women than men because our vaginas can be penetrated. But stranger rape is very rare. Unfortunately, sexual assault by friends, family and acquaintances is not. Sorry for the sidetrip but I just couldn’t let that fallacy pass without addressing it.)

Let’s look at what women had to say thirty to fifty years ago. I recently found a used copy of Michele Landsberg’s Women and Children First, which was published in 1982. It contains essays that bring together some of her feminist columns from the Toronto Star, which she started writing in 1978. The title comes from Landsberg’s argument that government programs for women and children are always the first to be cut (or not even started in the first place). The book provides a fascinating history of feminism in Canada, and imho should be required reading for all Canadians, men and women.

Thirty years ago, Canada’s Criminal Code did allow a maximum sentence of life in prison for rape, but only with proof of vaginal penetration. “And if proof of vaginal penetration can’t be found, the importance of the attack is so diminished in the eyes of the law that no matter what terror was experienced, no matter how prolonged or ugly the nature of the attack, from forced fellatio to jamming objects into the woman’s orifices, the maximum sentence under the law [was] five years. Of course, if the attack was committed against a man, the maximum sentence [was] ten years.” Landsberg writes about a case in the US where a man violently raped his estranged wife in 1978 (in the presence of their two-year-old daughter no less) and he was acquitted solely because he was her husband.

Thirty years ago, there was no pay equity legislation. In 1979, the average earned income of Canadian women who worked for the full year was 63 percent of the full-year earnings of men. (Today that figure is 71 percent.) Landsberg writes, “Consider: a man and a woman, both with the same experience, are working side by side at the same job. On the average in Canada, he will be earning two-fifths more than she will, despite the fact that she is, statistically, better educated and more reliable. What is the difference between them? Privilege, based on owning the right set of reproductive organs.” A 1979 survey, by Dr. Margrit Eichler of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, found that roughly half the male teachers interviewed thought that women should be fired first when there are job cutbacks.

My own mom, a registered nurse, told me about her own experience in 1966 when the pay of (female) public health nurses was reviewed and compared to the pay of (male) health inspectors. While registered nurses need four years of post-secondary education, health inspectors take a six-month course. In the end, it was decided that health inspectors should be paid more than nurses because they have families to support. This despite the fact that most of the nurses my mom worked with were single mothers (of course, back then, there was no maternity leave so women quit when they got pregnant – so it makes sense that the only working women with children would be the sole earners for their families). “Affirmative action for women is another topic of furious debate. I have often heard men sneer at affirmative action as the most contemptible of reverse discriminations. ‘Wouldn’t you be ashamed to have it said that you only got your job because of special discrimination?’ they often say to [Landsberg]. Why, I wonder, do these men never feel ashamed that they almost certainly enjoy their jobs, status, and income because of the overwhelming special privilege given to men?”

Thirty years ago, two-thirds of people living in poverty were women. Landsberg blames this fact on the mythology that women’s primary task is wifedom and motherhood, and that task comes without material reward in our economic system: “Why aren’t women rewarded then, for the housewifery and motherhood that are so sentimentally exalted in the mythology of ‘the little woman’? Why is poverty the mostly likely lot in life for women who have devoted themselves solely to these sanctified tasks? The answer is simple. Her worth is defined only in relation to man. The whole world beams upon her devoted motherhood until her husband leaves her. Then what avails her secret brownie recipe, her gleaming floor? She has no skills worth selling in the outside world and so must become that most despised and impoverished of all humans in Canada, the welfare mother. Now her motherhood has something tainted about it; intimations of filth and degradation surround her. The shudder we once reserved for illegitimacy is now awarded to the women unlucky enough to have children but no longer any man to serve.”

Thirty years ago, the (female) editor of Roget’s Thesaurus neutralized a number of gendered terms, like changing mankind to humankind. “The Globe and Mail was outraged. ‘Neutered!’ exclaimed the headline of its editorial — a Freudian slip if there ever was one, since the Globe has always argued that ‘man’ words like ‘mankind’ were neuter, not masculine, to begin with.” If you think these language changes are not important, Landsberg suggests you “imagine a small boy growing up in a fictional Amazonia, where phrases like womankind, she, chairwoman, God created woman in her own image, all women are created equal, womanhood, and all of woman’s history, are the dominant norm, and everything male is a kind of subvariant, afterthought or abnormality. Would you expect little George to grow up and apply for jobs as chairwoman of the board, or even waitress, actress, or alderwoman?”

(It might be tempting to say we’ve come a long way since then, but I’m not convinced. We may have stronger penalties for rape and a broader definition of sexual assault, but something like 60 or 70 percent of rapes still go unreported. We may have pay equity legislation but somehow we still don’t have pay equity. There remains a 21 percent income gap between men and women – not much better than the 10 to 25 percent Landsberg cited thirty years ago. We may have paid maternity leave in Canada, but we still don’t have enough affordable childcare and the work culture still doesn’t help dual-income families balance work and family. Women remain among the poorest of the poor in Canada. Almost one-quarter (24 percent) of Canadian women raising children on their own are poor and 14 percent of single older women are poor.)

Now, I’m not saying that the women photographers listed by Badger all dealt with these issues directly in their work. I’m not familiar enough with their work to know. I’m just saying that thirty to fifty years ago, women had a lot to say.

So why am I mad at Badger? Here’s a man who gets it. He understands the complications of what feminists are trying to dismantle. Before his essay, it hadn’t quite occurred to me that my general preference for ‘straight’ photography might be the result of sexist conditioning. Obviously, as my first post on gender shows, I was approaching the idea that our visual tastes might be shaped by sexist preferences. But I didn’t think as far as Badger does. When I first saw Cindy Sherman’s work — I remember pulling the book down from my university library’s shelf — I hated it on sight. In fact, I often find that my first response to a lot of women artists’ who work along the alternative or directorial themes Badger sees is that I just don’t like it. Give me Edward Weston and Stephen Shore and all the rest of the photographers Szarkowski promoted any day. As Michele Landsberg points out, “the more we talk about the ways in which women are victimized and oppressed, the more we alienate the many young women who very naturally scorn to identify themselves as underdogs. [...] The very individuals whose wrongs are to be exposed and sufferings relieved would much rather see themselves, thank you very much, as winners, not losers. Happily deluded that they themselves are invulnerable, they reject the critique along with the sackcloth and ashes.” That is how I felt when I first saw Cindy Sherman’s work.

Well, I’m mad for a few reasons. For one, he only shares these insights after most of his book focuses on white male photographers, all practitioners of the ‘straight’ photograph, all pretty well-known already: Walker Evans, Eugene Atget, Richard Avedon, Martin Parr, John Gossage and Robert Adams. Of the essays in the second part of the book, two focus on the work of one woman photographer each: Susan Lipper and Anna Fox. Other than the essay I’m discussing here, the rest are mostly about men. Badger does use one of Eileen Cowin’s images for the cover, but it feels like too little too late. And he starts the essay with a long excuse about why he’s focused on men, even though he’s well aware of the bias:

“I am sure that the kind of photography I particularly like is made primarily by male photographers. The reason why I like it is probably because I am male, and have been conditioned to like it, and so on and so forth. [...] As a critic, I have not written as much about women as I have about men, but then again, I haven’t been asked as much. Critics tend to write about certain things because they are asked, and I think that many women photographers quite naturally ask fellow women to introduce their monographs or review their shows.”

Don’t critics have a responsibility to bring good work to the public’s attention? You could argue he’s trying to do just that by writing the essay, but giving women photographers an essay or exhibition of their own just doesn’t cut it for me. Badger offers “a suggestion for an exhibition that would rectify this state of affairs, or at least illuminate a corner of recent photographic history that has been somewhat neglected.” But one exhibition is not going to rectify this state of affairs at all. If women and minorities are only represented exclusively in the context of women and minorities, their work remains outside the canon, an alternative to it. It doesn’t do anything to get at the root of the problem: privilege. And that’s just not acceptable.

As Landsberg points out, “Indoctrination is an amazing process. We take the male literature course absolutely for granted. It’s ‘normal’. But [...] picture a high school course in which every novel, play, and poem just happened to be written by a woman and featured a woman. Wouldn’t that seem ‘biased’? Can’t you just hear the indignant howls for more ‘balance?” And later in the same essay*, she says, “maleness is the stamp of excellence[.] Researchers keep proving it. In one classic study, university students consistently gave higher marks to an essay signed with a male name, and lower marks to the same essay signed by a woman. At the University of Manitoba, researchers showed that even mildly sexist language (the use of the pronoun ‘he’ in a career description of a psychologist) triggered, in students, a bias against women in that profession.”

That said, you have to start somewhere. And an exhibition is as good a place as any. My biggest beef with Badger, though, is that he makes the suggestion, but it seems like he wants someone else to act on it. Maybe I’m not being fair, but I didn’t get any sense of urgency or agency from the essay. I don’t think he’s actually interested in making this exhibition a reality. He just wants to point out the gap and have someone else make it happen. No doubt he thinks it’s a job more suitable for a woman, since it’s really a woman’s issue. Joerg Colberg, not usually one to step down from a contentious discussion, did the same thing when he said, “I hope that especially ‘From Diane Arbus to Cindy Sherman’ will not only be read and discussed widely, but that it will also result in the exhibition (and re-evaluation!) of overlooked female photographers Badger proposes.” He’s not going to discuss it beyond that sentence, but he sure hopes someone else will.

It seems to me this is a major part of the problem. There are good, smart men of influence who understand the issues that feminism is fighting, but they don’t see it as their place to take up the fight. Badger says, “I can lay my hand on my heart and say that I never consciously consider the gender of a photographer when looking at work.” But maybe it’s time that he did. How else to combat unconscious bias but with conscious thought and action? If not him, then who?

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* The first essay in Women and Children First, “Drink Up Your Shrinking-Potion” is positively brilliant. So brilliant and so out-of-print that I’m seriously considering breaking copyright and retyping the whole thing, just so more people can read it.