Anna Gaskell (born October 22, 1969
) is an American
art photographer
Fine-art photography is photography created in line with the vision of the photographer as artist, using photography as a medium for creative expression. The goal of fine-art photography is to express an idea, a message, or an emotion. This stand ...
and artist from Des Moines, Iowa.
She is best known for her photographic series that she calls "elliptical
narratives
A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller, novel, etc.). Narra ...
" which are similar to the works produced by
Cindy Sherman
Cynthia Morris Sherman (born January 19, 1954) is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters.
Her breakthrough work is often co ...
. 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.
Early life and education
Gaskell's mother was an evangelical Christian who brought Anna and her brother along on "wild pilgrimages throughout the Midwest," where they would witness miracles being performed, acts of healing, people speaking in tongues, and other
Charismatic
Charisma () is a personal quality of presence or charm that compels its subjects.
Scholars in sociology, political science, psychology, and management reserve the term for a type of leadership seen as extraordinary; in these fields, the term "ch ...
Christian practices. She claims that she does not remember anything strange about these acts, "but more a feeling of excitement and a security in the faith that
hefelt from everyone there." Gaskell says that her work revolves around a similar idea of faith, believing the possibility of the impossible and suspension of disbelief.
After studying for two years at
Bennington College
Bennington College is a private liberal arts college in Bennington, Vermont. Founded in 1932 as a women's college, it became co-educational in 1969. It claims to be the first college to include visual and performing arts as an equal partner in ...
,
she received her BFA from the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum and ...
in 1992.
["Gaskell, Anna." ''Benezit Dictionary of Artists''. ''Oxford Art Online''. Oxford University Press. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.] In 1995, she received her MFA from
Yale School of Art
The Yale School of Art is the art school of Yale University. Founded in 1869 as the first professional fine arts school in the United States, it grants Masters of Fine Arts degrees to students completing a two-year course in graphic design, painti ...
, studying under
Gregory Crewdson
Gregory Crewdson (born September 26, 1962) is an American photographer. He photographs tableaux of American homes and neighborhoods.
Life and career
Crewdson was born in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. He attended John Dewey ...
.
Career
Gaskell stages all of her scenes, using the style of "
narrative
A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travel literature, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller (ge ...
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
The Menil Collection, located in Houston, Texas, refers either to a museum that houses the art collection of founders John de Menil and Dominique de Menil, or to the collection itself of approximately 17,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawing ...
, 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."
1990s
1996
In haunting photographic scenes of preadolescent girls, Gaskell alludes to well-known children's literature, such as Lewis Carroll's ''
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (commonly ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a ...
,'' which can be found in two of her series: w''onder'' (1996–97) and ''override'' (1997). Gaskell made her international debut with the twenty photograph series, ''wonder'' (1996–97),
the first series Gaskell created after receiving her MFA at
Yale University School of Art
The Yale School of Art is the art school of Yale University. Founded in 1869 as the first professional fine arts school in the United States, it grants Masters of Fine Arts degrees to students completing a two-year course in graphic design, painti ...
. ''wonder'', which draws the viewer in with stained-glass coloration intensified by lamination,
features two identically dressed Alices photographed together and separately and at oblique angles that recall the disorienting experiences of Alice in Wonderland.
For example, in ''Untitled #1'' of ''wonder,'' one of the Alices is pictured treading in a pool of her tears, "her body grotesquely distorted by the refraction of light on the water"
and in ''Untitled #2'', one Alice leans over the other, plugging her nose, seemingly about to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. These two photographs also demonstrate how Gaskell takes on the role of "unreliable narrator" within her series by her "use of photography as a format which invites the suspension of disbelief, with her codings and fragmentations of the frames exposing the viewer to the inconsistencies and assumptions that are held in place by realist photographic as well as narrative conventions.” Through the use of different sized photographs, Gaskell displays an instability in Alice by referring to the character's growth spurts and shrinking spells.
1997
In the series ''override'', allusions to ''
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (commonly ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a ...
'' are made again, as in ''wonder'', but in this series, the scenarios are drawn from Gaskell's own imagination.
''override'' features seven versions of Alice which alternate between roles of victim and aggressor. A description about the series written by
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...
curators states, "
he seven versions of Alicetry to control the changes to her body by literally, physically holding her in place — a potent metaphor for the anxiety and confusion experienced by children on the verge of adolescence."
Color and chiaroscuro play a large role in Gaskell's work as they lead the viewer to the main source of action in each piece. While the ''wonder'' series features cool blue tones, the photographs featured in ''override'' were captured in the "golden hues of Twilight." The constantly changing scale of the photographs, the physical stretching and pulling actions performed by the models, and the range of size of the photographs themselves (6 x 7 1/4 inches to 60 x 90 inches) all relate to the central metaphor of Alice in Wonderland: change.
Gaskell's film ''Floater'' repeats in a backwards sequence a scene of an
Ophelia
Ophelia () is a character in William Shakespeare's drama ''Hamlet'' (1599–1601). She is a young noblewoman of Denmark, the daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes and potential wife of Prince Hamlet, who, due to Hamlet's actions, ends up in ...
-like young woman in a pool of water, trying to decide whether she should drown or save herself. The theme of this cycle of indecision is seen again in her series ''half life'' in 2002.
1998
In her photographic series,
hide', Gaskell references a lesser-known
Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm ( or ), Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), were a brother duo of German academics, philologists, cultural researchers, lexicographers, and authors who together collected and published folklore. They are among the ...
tale, "
The Magic Donkey."
This series features young girls alone in a gothic mansion, creating a sense of dread and underlying sexual intrigue that takes its impetus from the tale of a young woman forced to hide beneath animal skins to hide from the matrimonial desires of her father.
[Nancy Spector, "The Fiction of Fiction: An Exquisite Unease," in Anna Gaskell (NY: powerHouse Books: 2001) .] The name of the series is drawn from the children's game
hide-and-seek
Hide-and-seek (sometimes known as hide-and-go-seek) is a popular children's game in which at least two players (usually at least three) conceal themselves in a set environment, to be found by one or more seekers. The game is played by one chose ...
, the dual personality of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Doctor is an academic title that originates from the Latin word of the same spelling and meaning. The word is originally an agentive noun of the Latin verb 'to teach'. It has been used as an academic title in Europe since the 13th century, w ...
, and the literal skin, or hide, that creates a boundary between the inside and the outside, the self and the other.
1999
In 1999, Gaskell produced two series, ''Sally Salt says'' and ''by proxy'', both of which featured Sally Salt, the female protagonist in ''
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
''The Adventures of Baron Munchausen'' is a 1988 adventure fantasy film co-written and directed by Terry Gilliam, and starring John Neville, Sarah Polley, Eric Idle, Jonathan Pryce, Oliver Reed, Robin Williams and Uma Thurman. An international ...
'', a 1988 British comedy film based on the
tall tale
A tall tale is a story with unbelievable elements, related as if it were true and factual. Some tall tales are exaggerations of actual events, for example fish stories ("the fish that got away") such as, "That fish was so big, why I tell ya', it n ...
s told about 18th-century German
baron Karl Friedrich Hieronymus von Munchausen. ''by proxy'' takes on a darker tone by combining the fictional, gullible, and lovable Sally Salt character with a real-life serial killer,
Genene Jones
Genene Anne Jones (born July 13, 1950) is an American serial killer, responsible for the deaths of up to 60 infants and children in her care as a licensed vocational nurse during the 1970s and 1980s. In 1984, Jones was convicted of murder and ...
, a pediatric nurse who, in the early 1980s, was found guilty of the murder of several children in Texas. Gaskell's models in ''by proxy'' wear white nurse's outfits. The girls in the photographs represent Genene Jones at different stages in her life, battling with her own tormented mind. The title of the series draws from
Munchausen syndrome by proxy
Factitious disorder imposed on another (FDIA), also known as fabricated or induced illness by carers (FII), and first named as Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSbP), is a condition in which a caregiver creates the appearance of health problems in a ...
, a type of child abuse in which a caregiver purposefully makes a child under their care ill, usually to attract the attention or sympathy of others upon themselves. Though all of her series are imbued with a sense of darkness, compared to the fictional stories depicted in her previous series such as ''override'' and ''wonder'', ''by proxy'' is all the more unsettling in that it highlights real-life and disturbing subjects such as
Munchausen syndrome by proxy
Factitious disorder imposed on another (FDIA), also known as fabricated or induced illness by carers (FII), and first named as Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSbP), is a condition in which a caregiver creates the appearance of health problems in a ...
and the Jones murders.
2000s
2002
Gaskell's ''half life—''drawn from stories such as
Daphne du Maurier's ''
Rebecca
Rebecca, ; Syriac: , ) from the Hebrew (lit., 'connection'), from Semitic root , 'to tie, couple or join', 'to secure', or 'to snare') () appears in the Hebrew Bible as the wife of Isaac and the mother of Jacob and Esau. According to biblical ...
,''
Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (''née'' Stevenson; 29 September 1810 – 12 November 1865), often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist, biographer and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many st ...
's (no relation) "The Old Nurse's Story," and
Henry James' ''
The Turn of the Screw
''The Turn of the Screw'' is an 1898 horror novella by Henry James which first appeared in serial format in ''Collier's Weekly'' (January 27 – April 16, 1898). In October 1898, it was collected in ''The Two Magics'', published by Macmill ...
—''began as an idea for a film installation and evolved into an exhibition combining still and moving images with ten photographs and a film installation. The unnamed central character of ''Rebecca,'' a tale from 1938 about an ingénue who goes abroad, marries a middle-aged patrician, and follows him back to his ancestral estate in Cornwall. There the young woman finds the house filled with the memory of the man's dead first wife, Rebecca, which torments the heroine to the brink of suicide. ''half life'' draws from the idea of Rebecca's presence in the estate and the heroine's mind. This series explores the human psyche, including the experiences of fear, isolation, and uncertainty. As seen in her previous works, the protagonist of ''half life'' is a young woman who finds herself between "the purity of youth and the gradual loss of innocence that comes with maturity." Differing itself from previous series, the question of identity is pushed to a new level in ''half life'' by the almost total exclusion of the main figure. When shown, the woman often has her back to the camera or remains hidden behind her hair.
Gaskell uses dynamic camera angles and elaborately decorated interiors in her photographs in ''half life'' creating a sense of vertigo or claustrophobia. The accompanying 21-minute film, similar to her piece, ''Floater'' (1997), features a woman floating under water in a state of non-being, neither fully dead or alive.
2007
In her video, ''Acting Lessons,'' Gaskell plays the protagonist, an actress who is performing a monologue and is continuously interrupted by an acting coach off screen. In this piece, Gaskell adopts "a mundane living room as the setting for her portrayal of emotional power struggles."
Exhibitions
Solo exhibitions
1997
* ''wonder'',
Casey Kaplan Gallery
Casey Kaplan is a contemporary art gallery in New York City, in the United States.
History
The gallery was founded in 1995 in a , one-room space located on the upper floor of a cast iron loft building on Broadway, before moving to Greene Street ...
, New York
1999
* ''by proxy'', Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York
* ''Sally Salt says…,'' Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne
* ''Hide,''
White Cube
White Cube is a contemporary art gallery founded by Jay Jopling in London in 1993. The gallery has two branches in London: White Cube Mason's Yard in central London and White Cube Bermondsey in South East London; White Cube Hong Kong, in Centra ...
, London
* ''Anna Gaskell'',
Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) is a collecting museum located in North Miami, Florida. The building was designed by the architecture firm Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects, New York City.
History
The Museum of Contemporary Art began ...
;
Museum of Modern Art, Oxford
Modern Art Oxford is an art gallery established in 1965 in Oxford, England. From 1965 to 2002, it was called The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford.
The gallery presents exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. It has a national and internationa ...
; Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg, Sweden
2000
* ''by proxy,''
Aspen Art Museum
Founded in 1979, the Aspen Art Museum (AAM) is a non-collecting contemporary art museum located in Aspen, Colorado. AAM exhibitions include drawings, paintings, sculptures, multimedia installations and electronic media.
Aspen Art Museum Building ...
, Colorado
2001
*
Des Moines Art Center
The Des Moines Art Center is an art museum with an extensive collection of paintings, sculpture, modern art and mixed media. It was established in 1948 in Des Moines, Iowa.
History
The Art Center traces its roots to 1916, when the Des Moines As ...
, Iowa
* Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy
* ''Resemblance,'' Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York
* ''Remarkable Places,'' Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne
* ''Future's Eve,''
New Langton Arts
New Langton Arts (active 1975 – 2009) was a not-for-profit arts organization focusing on contemporary art founded in 1975 and located the South of Market neighborhood in San Francisco, California. Part of the first wave of alternative art spaces ...
, San Francisco
2002
* ''Half Life,''
The Menil Collection
The Menil Collection, located in Houston, Texas, refers either to a museum that houses the art collection of founders John de Menil and Dominique de Menil, or to the collection itself of approximately 17,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawing ...
, Houston; White Cube, London
*
Addison Gallery of American Art
The Addison Gallery of American Art is an academic museum dedicated to collecting American art, organized as a department of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.
History
Directors of the gallery include Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr. (1940– ...
, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts
* Le studio, Yvon Lambert, Paris
2003
* ''Anagram,'' Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne
* ''
How Some Children Play at Slaughtering'', Project Room, Chicago
2004
* Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York
* ''At Sixes and Sevens'', Yvon Lambert, Paris
2005
* ''1991'', Galleria Massimo De Carlo, Milan
* ''Erasers'', Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne
2006
* ''Everything That Rises'', Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, Virginia
2007
* ''Paint Your Own Pictures'', Yvon Lambert, New York
* ''Still Life,''
Vizcaya Museum and Garden, Miami
* ''Erasers,'' The Box,
Wexner Center for the Arts
The Wexner Center for the Arts is the Ohio State University's "multidisciplinary, international laboratory for the exploration and advancement of contemporary art". The Wexner Center opened in November 1989, named in honor of the father of Limite ...
, Columbus, Ohio
2009
* ''Replayground'', Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne
2010
* ''Turns Gravity'', Yvon Lambert, New York
2013
* ''Penguin'', Yvon Lambert, Paris
* ''The Romantic Exiles'', Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne
2014
* ''Vampyr'' (with Douglas Gordon), Yvon Lambert, Paris
Select group exhibitions
1998
* ''Sightings'',
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch, the ICA c ...
(ICA), London
2002
* ''Photography Past/Forward. Aperture at 50'', Aperture's Burden Gallery, New York
* ''Moving Pictures,''
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...
, New York
2007
* ''Global Feminisms,''
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art is located on the fourth floor of the Brooklyn Museum, New York City, United States. Since 2007 it has been the home of Judy Chicago's 1979 installation, ''The Dinner Party''.
History
The Elizabet ...
,
The Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...
, New York
2012
* ''Exquisite Corpses. Drawings and Configuration,''
The Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of the ...
, New York
* ''Ecstatic Alphabets / Heaps of Language'', The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Reception
Grace Glueck, writing in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' in 2004, described Gaskell as an established "maker of spooky, tension-filled feminine fictions", her work recalling
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequel ...
's ''
Alice in Wonderland
''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (commonly ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatur ...
'',
Daphne du Maurier
Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, (; 13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989) was an English novelist, biographer and playwright. Her parents were actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and his wife, actress Muriel Beaumont. Her grandfather was Geor ...
's novel ''
Rebecca
Rebecca, ; Syriac: , ) from the Hebrew (lit., 'connection'), from Semitic root , 'to tie, couple or join', 'to secure', or 'to snare') () appears in the Hebrew Bible as the wife of Isaac and the mother of Jacob and Esau. According to biblical ...
'' and the films of
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...
. In Glueck's view, Gaskell's method is "to create a narrative expectation without fulfilling it", each picture hinting at a situation or story, provoking the viewer to speculate. Glueck does not necessarily approve of this, calling the process of challenging the viewer to make a story "do
ngthe artist's work".
Robert Mahoney, reviewing Gaskell's first exhibition of color photographs in 1997, calls the show a "masquerade" with a pair of "pretty twins" playing at ''Alice in Wonderland'' in blue pinafores, white tights and "black Mary Jane shoes". Mahoney calls this an intense search for identity, observing that the use of twins brings out the "mirror-like clarity" of Alice's dream journey. In his view, the blue and white coloration recalls the
Virgin Mary
Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother o ...
, while the use of young women to represent "prepubescent girls" brings sexuality into the images.
Christopher Mooney, writing for ArtReview in 2014, reviews an exhibition in Paris of Gaskell's photographs alongside her ex-partner Douglas Gordon's "wall, floor, and corner works". Mooney calls it a
swan song
The swan song ( grc, κύκνειον ᾆσμα; la, carmen cygni) is a metaphorical phrase for a final gesture, effort, or performance given just before death or retirement. The phrase refers to an ancient belief that swans sing a beautiful so ...
, the exhibition featuring swan
taxidermy
Taxidermy is the art of preserving an animal's body via mounting (over an armature) or stuffing, for the purpose of display or study. Animals are often, but not always, portrayed in a lifelike state. The word ''taxidermy'' describes the proce ...
in "many" of Gordon's works, and a
Bolshoi ballet
The Bolshoi Ballet is an internationally renowned classical ballet company based at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, Russia. Founded in 1776, the Bolshoi is among the world's oldest ballet companies. In the early 20th century, it came to internatio ...
prima ballerina, Svetlana Lunkina, who "danc
sacross Gaskell's screens". Mooney finds Lunkina the strongest element in the show, Gaskell's photographs displaying her as both graceful and "affecting".
Awards
*
Citigroup Private Bank Photography Prize (2000).
* Nancy Graves Foundation Grant (2002).
* Des Moines Art Center Artists Residency, Des Moines (2005)
* KunstFilmBiennale, Cologne, best film in the art category: Erasers (2005)
* NYFA Grant (2010)
* Artslink Grant (2010)
* Bohen Foundation Grant (2010)
* Recollects Residency, Paris (2011)
References
External links
Guggenheim Collections
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gaskell, Anna
1969 births
Living people
Photographers from Iowa
Artists from Des Moines, Iowa
School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni
Yale School of Art alumni
20th-century American women photographers
20th-century American photographers
21st-century American women photographers
21st-century American photographers