Posted on
2018-01-08
In ‘Women Crying’, Collier examines manifestations of staged emotions by enlarging and tightly cropping into imagery that originally appeared in advertisements and on album covers from the 1960’s to the 1980’s: imagery that served to reinforce a clichéd and romanticized notion of female vulnerability. (Paradoxically, the original advertisements and recordings were largely marketed to an audience of young and adolescent women).
Formally Collier’s photographic work mirrors the techniques of commercial and scientific photography: using a large-format plate camera Collier creates an almost
forensic account of the objects and subjects under consideration, within the formal context of the studio. Collier’s photographic works are typically based on imagery sourced from the material culture of the pre-digital era: including magazines, advertisements, album covers, and other printed matter that had previous widespread circulation. The manner in which photographic images circulate is a central concern in Collier’s consideration of photography’s many histories and uses – particularly in Collier’s examination of how photography has routinely been employed to portray the female subject in a sexually, psychologically or emotionally compromised state.
Opposite – Woman Crying #12, 2017
Exhibition runs through to January 13th, 2018
The Modern Institute
14-20 Osborne Street
G1 5QN Glasgow
Scotland
www.themoderninstitute.com
