How has stories and literature influenced the work of Anna Gaskell?
Traditionally, throughout the 20th century photography was centred around capturing the decisive moment, however, we have come to explore the notion of creating this ‘decisive moment’ artificially, constructing scenes made for only the purpose of photography. Tableaux photographs have been made from the beginning of the medium, although Staged photography emerged as its own known genre in the 1980’s; both ideas involve composing a scene much like a painting, creating elements of Pictorialism. Anna Gaskell creates ominous photographs of women, taking themes from literature and stories, generating a dream-like narrative in her work. I chose to look at Gaskell due to her staged and tableaux approaches and how she uses her influences to warp them into her own narratives and blurring the lines between fact and fiction. I am to review the extent to which stories and literature has influence her work using her imagery for Wonder (1996-97) influenced by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and Hide (1998) influenced by Brother’s Grimm tale The Magic Donkey. In my own work I intent to explore the stories of the myths and folklore based in my home of Jersey. Using Gaskell as my influence to explore the notions of the boundaries of a narrative from a literacy influence in the visual work and representations. I plan to explore these notions with the narrative of the legends, through tableaux and landscape the reality of these stories and their occupation of the island.
Historical Context:
The movement that took the medium of photography and reinvented it into an art form is known to be Pictorialism. Pictorialists wanted to make the photographs look like painting and drawings to penetrate the art work, this eventually would happen and go on to juxtapose the original purpose of photographs. In 1839 photography was first used in order to objectively present subjects scientifically, images were highly scientific, fixing the point on objects, and was not considered an art form; that is until pictorialism was presented. The shift from photography being used to produce purely scientific and representational images happened from the 1850s when advocates such as the English painter Willian John Newton suggested that photography could also be artistic. Although it can be traced back to these early ideas, the Pictorialist movement was most active during the 1880s and 1915, during its peak it had an international reach with centers in England, France and the USA. Pictorialists were the first to begin to try and class photography as an art form, by doing so they spoke about the artistic value of photography as well as a debate surrounding the manipulation of photographs and the social role that eventually holds.
Pictorialist photographers used a range of darkroom techniques that allow the photographers to express themselves creatively using it as a medium to tell stories.
Anna Gaskell:
Untitled #8 (Wonder)
Anna Gaskell is a contemporary American artist known for creating contemporary work exploring themes from literature and stories. Gaskell creates ominous images of women that nod to familiar or historic narratives, she explains her process of an attempt “to combine fiction, fact, and my own personal mishmash of life into something new is how I make my work.”, Gaskell is creating imagery by merging together reality, fiction and her own personal touches of the two warping and blurring the lines between the known stories and her own twist on them. Creating photographs that depict narratives from literature that may not be the original people know, Gaskell takes her influences and warps them into her own, stretching the boundaries of the narrative of the stories and literature that has influenced her work. Gaskell’s work dips into the notion of Pictorialism, using tableaux methods to generate her photographs. Gaskell’s photo series “Wonder” is influenced off Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the work is produced off the back of the idea of isolating dramatic moments from the larger plots. The photographs are staged and planned in the style of ‘narrative photography’, the scenes are artificial, produced and only exist to be photographed.