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ANNA GASKELL |
Anna Gaskell has said that her work is more influenced by film and painting than by the conventions of photography. Indeed, Gaskell’s working method is more akin to that of an astute movie director than to a camera-wielding photographer. Drawing inspiration from a wide array of literary and cinematic sources, her works are made in series that form what she calls "elliptical narratives." The subject matter she photographs for these "narratives" is staged – from the selection and costuming of the young girls who are invariably her subjects, to her careful control of the lighting, camera angles, and exaggerated cropping. The results are vaguely disturbing, leaving one to question just exactly what is happening in these images.
Untitled #73 (resemblance) is from a body of work titled resemblance, which she undertook in the spring of 2001 while an artist-in-residence at the Addison Gallery in Andover, Massachusetts. This series was inspired by such literary sources as The Sandman by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Tomorrow’s Eve by Villiers de l’Isle Adam, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and in it, Gaskell deals with the notion of creating an artificial person. She dressed female students from Phillips Academy in Andover in white lab coats and cast them as young technicians undertaking this bizarre experiment. But unlike the protagonists in the literature that inspired her, the girls in Gaskell’s photographs are attempting to use their hands to build their creator, an artificial "mother." The pictures in the series suggest a disquieting narrative that is ambiguous, non-linear, and open to complex interpretations ranging from ethical debates about biotechnology and cloning to feminist issues of gaining control over one’s body and self-image. In this photograph, although the "creation" is about to be unveiled, it will undoubtedly leave the viewer with more questions than answers.
- Jennifer Bayles, Educator for Special Projects