The Photographer’s Wife

Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object.

John Berger, Ways of Seeing

I am interested in the lessons art history teaches women, specifically those regarding the female muse. Is it possible to internalize these lessons, and if so, what effect does this have on one’s own production?

The Photographer’s Wife presents a female subject gazing intimately at the camera, suggesting that the artist is making images of his lover. As I embody both roles at once, this creates a fictionalized photographer as well as a fictionalized subject. The model/subject’s job is always performative—she must be able to portray both a true and idealized self. In the case of these photographs, however, the problem is slightly more complicated. As the model/subject, I must convey not only this multiple subjectivity, but also reflect back to the viewer an imagined photographer husband.

Paradoxically, these attempts intentionally fall short. The model pictured is not seen at her physical best, and often displays frustration and exhaustion where one might expect to see languor and an appeasing, flirtatious sexuality.

In making use of this visual trope, I appropriate the male gaze and examine the history of images made by male artists of their wives and lovers. More specifically, I reference well-known portraits of Edith Gowin, Eleanor Callahan, and Maria Friedlander (made by their photographer/husbands), while playing with various photographic conventions, such as travel and sensual imagery.

It is interesting to look at the images Nicholas Nixon made of his wife Bebe in this context, especially those from The Brown Sisters. The series depicts his wife and her three sisters in an annual portrait session that spans over 30 years. I don’t know what it is I see in Bebe Nixon’s face, but it has always held an intense fascination for me. Her look is inscrutable, yet there is a remarkable intimacy in her gaze, especially as it stands alongside that of her sisters into the same camera lens. In certain images it seems as if she is more a sister, less a wife, and I wonder if this is something she controls or something that Nixon seeks out with the camera. If she is in control, is this an assertion of herself as a person not adjunct to her husband? Is it a reminder, a punishment, a threat?

There is a disparity between the sexes in the history of art and portraiture that can’t be ignored as a subtext in my work; it’s the story of very powerful men using women to portray themselves in certain ways. This is a type of propaganda, a positioning of oneself in the world to create a particular point of view. In focusing on the process of women navigating this space, I excavate the history of art and portraiture; not only the discouraging actualities of the inherent gender disparity, but also the magic that can occur when all of these different possibilities interact in some way.