Looking into my key words of myths, legends and stories surrounding the idea of occupation I came across Anna Gaskell, a contemporary American artists known for exploring themes such as Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1865). Using photography, video, and drawing, Gaskell creates ominous images of women that nod to familiar or historic narratives. Born on October 22nd, 1969 Gaskell would create mostly self-portraits in the style to that of Cindy Sherman, from this she developed to taking photographs of young girls in odd or ambiguous scenes as seen in her series Wonder (1996-97). Gaskell is famous for her dream-like narrative photographs which make reference to children’s games, literature and psychology.
Gaskell’s film influences range from the Noir to French New Wave and Horror. In a series entitled Hide (1998), she sets up a narrative using the sinister Brothers’ Grimm story The Magic Donkey, which is about a young women who disguises herself under pelts to hide from a marriage proposal from her own father. The series evokes a sense of terror through the scenery of a gothic mansion and contrast of light and dark in a dimly lit space.
Gaskell explains, “Trying to combine fiction, fact and my own personal mishmash of life into something new is how I make my work”, this gives me ideas and influence of how she is a good artist for me to look into and have influence and inspiration from with the ideas of taking a starting point of fiction, using the fact and not only that but my own influence I feel is something very important that I could use as I have the influence of my own personal experiences of being told the sorties and living in and around the island.
I have chosen to look at Gaskell as one of my artists as I enjoy and am finding a lot of inspiration in the way she takes her photographs and presents them with the lighting and the costumes and effects that her photographs using the lighting but also the double characters I feel is a really interesting take in some of her work. In my own work I plan on producing photoshoots in the style of tableaux photography, staging the photographs and having the models in costume and makeup.
Analysis of Anna Gaskell’s work: Wonder & Override
Gaskell’s work is produced and influenced off the back of the idea of isolating dramatic moments from larger plots such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, which is visible in the two series: Wonder (1996-97) and Override (1997). Gaskell’s style of ‘narrative photography” the images are planned and staged; the scenes presented are ‘artificial’ in that it exists only to be photographed. Gaskell’s process can be mentioned as similar to filming however there is an important difference; Gaskell’s photographs are not tied together by a linear thread, it is staged and created to be as though all of the events take place simultaneously, in an ever-present. In untitled #9 of the wonder series, a wet bar of soap has been dragged along a wooden floor; in untitled #17 it appears again, forced into a girls mouth with no explanation of how or why. This suspension of time and causality leads to a sense of ambiguity that she uses to evoke a vivid and dream like world.
Below I have a photograph from the wonder series, it shows two girls in the frame one lent over and holding onto the other and holding her nose. Gaskell’s girls do not represent individuals, but act out the contradictions and desires of a single psyche, Gaskell uses a pair of twins for Alice for the identicalness. While their unity is subset by their identical clothing and looks, the mysterious and often cruel rituals they act out upon each other may be metaphors for disorientation and mental illness. In wonder and override, the character collectively evoked is Alice, perhaps lost in the Wonderland of her own mind, unable to determine whether the bizarre things happening to her are real or the result of her imagination.
In the photograph below we can see both of the twins in the costume of Alice, one holding onto the nose sat above the other, the photograph is taken or has been cropped quite close up into the characters, it is creating a sense of intimacy to be that close to the subjects of the photographs but the cropping also cuts out the surroundings of the girls, it removes the context of what is happening around them and leaves the onlooker to be able to use the story of Alice in Wonderland that they know to create ideas of what is happening in this photograph alongside the other photographs. The lighting of the photograph creates an eery aura of the photograph the dark shadows on the girls I feel creates a dramatic effect that I want to try to incorporate into my own work when I start to develop the tableaux images in my personal investigation. The almost chiaroscuro lighting creates that dramatic effect on the girl in the top of the photograph.
Wonder #12