Anna Gaskell is an american artist who is known for her photography, video, and film work. She is inspired by fairy tales, myths, and other stories, and often surreal and dreamlike, and she has been compared to artists like Lewis Carroll and the brothers Grimm.
Anna Gaskell (born October 22, 1969) is an American art photographer and artist from Des Moines, Iowa.
She is best known for her photographic series that she calls “elliptical narratives” which are similar to the works produced by Cindy Sherman. Like Sherman, Gaskell’s works are influenced by film and painting, rather than the typical conventions of photography. She lives and works in New York.
Career
Gaskell stages all of her scenes, using the style of “narrative photography,” wherein each scene exists only to be photographed. Gaskell pioneers a new discourse of contemporary photography where within each of her series, the narrative of her photographs is disrupted, “its fragments functioning like film stills excised from their context but suggesting a missing whole. “There are gaps of space and time left between each photograph, evoking a “vivid and dreamlike world. “In a 2002 interview with curator Matthew Drutt of the Menil Collection, Gaskell describes her creative process and the inspiration she draws from other sources in the following way: “The stories and events that I choose to use as jumping-off points are simply that. They are only a part of what goes into the work, and perhaps a useful reference for viewers. […] Trying to combine fiction, fact, and my own personal mishmash of life into something new is how I make my work. Into all of this, I try to insert a degree of mystery that ensures that the dots may not connect in the same way every time.”
Anna Gaskell Is another photographer that inspires me due to her using multiple people to create a utopian reality by exploring imagination and creativity. For one of my photoshoots I am going to take similar photos to her with my friend group. This links to the theme of identity as its looking into different people imagination and their different perspectives on how they view the world. I might also take her idea of fantasy and turn it dystopian to look at the reality of the world, This would help create contrasting images which I can join together to create one single image