Saturday, June 19, 2010

The Female Gaze is Upon Herself


The Countess of Castiglione, 2005

The Countess of Castiglione, 1860

I am currently designing a catalog for an exhibtion at Steven Kasher gallery, entitled Inspired, curated by Beth Rudin DeWoody. This photo is my favorite so far, Len Prince & Jessie Mann's 2005 interpretation of Pierre-Louis Pierson's The Countess of Castiglione, c. 1860.

The Countess, Virginia Oldoini, was a visionary. Like most women in court, she had portraits taken. However, she became a bit obsessed and thought of it more as an artistic performance, a play she set the stage for. She directed the shoots with Pierre-Louis in which she re-created imporatnt scenes of her life; experimenting with props and fulfilling her own fantasy of the female gaze through the act of photography. 700 different photographs were created.

Maybe Lady Gaga should be taking more photos of herself and not making music?

- sea -

6 comments:

  1. re lady gaga...agreed.

    also: http://www.cheimread.com/exhibitions/2009-06-25_the-female-gaze/

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  2. awesome, thanks Dana! xo

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  3. ahhh! i wrote my thesis on her! i will certainly be looking into this exhibition. she is an artist that really should be looked at more closely. very interesting to see her inspire new works. funny enough, when i first started my research, i made my own countess inspired image - though not nearly as cool, mind you. =)

    http://ashliej.tumblr.com/post/48419426/i-was-messing-around-with-photobooth-this-morning

    thanks for posting this!

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  4. Thanks for sharing Ashlie, great photo : ) I really want to get my hands on a copy of the exhibition catalog from the Met. Have you seen it?

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  5. i have it. it took me awhile to find and it was quite expensive when i did. i want to say i ended up finding it on amazon, but i'll have to think about that some more to be sure. i'll get back to you.

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  6. Yeah, I saw the prices on Amazon for used paperback. Kinda expensive.

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