Sarah Faust

At Sixty, Photographs of My Mother

Daughters look to their mothers as models for what it means to be a woman. My mother taught me that the expression of womanhood can be richly layered, complicated, and even contradictory. In these photographs I have tried to capture the essence of being a woman, and in particular, a woman of sixty. The act of photographing my mother as she is now is my response to her mortality, as well as my own.


http://www.edelmangallery.com/faust.htm

Tomoko Sawada, School Days

Ten Japanese high school class photographs, printed on thick card, are collected in this edition which extends on Sawada's exploration of costume and identity. Each photograph features the artist re-presenting herself as a multitude of different students (and one teacher for each class) in a comment on the power of educational institutions and the social pressures facing young Japanese women.

Leasha Overturf

http://www.edelmangallery.com/Overturf/overturf.htm

I came across Leasha's work when I was looking up something else.

I have been doing self-portraits for over 15 years. About 5 years ago I started having a different regard for my changing body. I was quickly approaching middle age as well as dealing with my feelings of my photographer husband photographing other women nude.

On top of these feelings, I also was dealing with great confusion over my younger sister having a bunch of plastic surgery done on a body I thought was perfectly beautiful.

I started documenting my body in a literal and stark way, just to watch it change. I needed to come to terms with the changes.

Then one day my photographer husband asked me to start posing for him in the role of different women for a project about himself that he was producing. Being a photographer myself, I wanted to participate in his project to help him but after a few sessions it brought up many emotions for me.

I have always dealt with a lack of confidence in myself and my body, and playing the role of different women kind of drove my lack of confidence to a new place. And, it actually made me questions all of my selves - the self-conscious self vs. the confident self. Occasionally putting on a wig let me be loose with all of my ideas and thoughts.

Was I myself "okay" as I was? Did I need to change my body? Why did my younger sister feel the need to change her body? Why are so many women not happy with themselves? Does my husband love me as I am? Who are these other women he is photographing? Am I happy with myself? And the list went on and on.

I realized that I no longer could only document my body in a stark and literal way, but also I needed to photograph my emotions, my relationship, and my many selves.

Sandy Stockhold

Homage to Frida Kahlo. http://www.sparkgallery.com/site/component/pgstr/Stockhold.html

Artist Statement

For the past several years I've been working on a visual autobiography titled “myselfportraits.” By creating staged photographic tableaux I've used myself as the canvas to examine aspects of aging, regret, politics, philosophy, fame and notoriety.

The structure of this series presents a continuing tension between my public, my private, and my artist persona. This project has been both challenging and empowering and has allowed me the “freedom” of self-examination in my art.

Dan Estabrook dvd at ICP

I came across this dvd of Dan's work in the ICP bookstore yesterday. Of course, I immediately bought it!

Dan doesn't talk about his work necessarily as self-portraits but he does often use himself in his work .

Dan is represented by Catherine Edelman
He is also in a show at Daniel Cooney in NYC. He has a flickr page and I found some of his work on this site

Tomoko Sawada at Zabriskie Gallery, NYC

After the Met, I went to the Zabriskie Gallery to check out Tomoko Sawada's show. I like the grids more than the individual large prints of twins. It is a smallish gallery and no one was there to greet me (not that they necessarily would greet me if they were there). So there wasn't an opportunity to get a press release and there isn't one listed on their site.