Women Watching Women
A week in photography exhibits-- and more
I’m in New York City this week, which meant I saw a lot of art— with my sisters, with my mother, and all by myself. It’s been a busy week so today I’ll just drop in some thoughts about what I’ve seen so far, with the common thread of women looking at themselves and other women….
First up, I went to the Museum of Modern Art with my sister and mother and stumbled on the Kathe Kollwitz exhibit, there through July 20. Kollwitz had a remarkable life as an activist for women’s and working-class causes in early twentieth-century Germany. The exhibit was beautifully organized but I am often underwhelmed by social realist work, which can feel preachy to me. I most admired Kollwitz’s evolving self portraits, including this one, with its beautifully cross-hatched shading and steady return gaze.
On another floor we viewed LaToya Ruby Frazier’s contemporary photographs, on display through September 7th. The show opens onto a lovely room of early family portraits overhung with floating video screens. Frazier studies her mother and grandmother with a loving and unflinching eye, making an artistic collaboration out of their daily lives. It was particularly moving to view that early work with my 90-year-old mother. The rest of the show focused on Frazier’s work with local communities to document water quality (in Flint, Michigan) and union organizing at automobile plants. I’ve admired that work elsewhere, but here it defeated me. There were rows and rows of images each accompanied by long sections of text and after a few examples I couldn’t absorb any more information. My sister dashed upstairs to see the Joan Jonas show while my mother and I retreated to the cafe. I wonder if I would have responded differently— with better attention— if I had seen the Frazier show first. I’ll try to return to it later in the summer with fresher eyes.
A few days later I went alone to see Vivian Maier’s photographs at Fotografiska, one of my favorite smaller venues for photography in New York City. This show, on view through September 29th, offers a full retrospective of the street photographer whose works were never exhibited during her life time, but discovered as a complete archive by a collector after her death. While working as a governess, Maier documented her own daily life New York City and Chicago during the 1950s through 1980s. Her portraits, like Frazier’s, are interested in doubling and mirrors, often with a playful angle. In some experimental photos we see a child’s eye through the hole of a toy or seashell. Are we looking at them or are they looking out at us?
Coincidentally, for my theme of women and self portraiture, another photographer I admire, Elinor Carucci, is profiled in Oldster Magazine today.
is one of my favorite Substacks, where people describe their experience of aging. I’ve seen Carucci’s self portraits in middle age elsewhere and found them very intimate and surprising. In the Oldster piece the three-generational portrait of herself, her daughter, and her mother serendipitously echoes the photograph I use above from MoMA of me and my mother looking at Frazier and her mother, or other moments this week that involved my daughter too. These photographs reflect connections within families and also forge them. “My photographs told me more than I knew or could understand on my own,” Carucci writes in the piece. That’s a great place to conclude this brief survey of my week. That was my response to these women’s works too —a clarity of feeling that is not exactly verbal, and hard to paraphrase.“My photographs told me more than I knew or could understand on my own.”
— Elinor Carucci in Oldster Magazine
Other related experiences in a packed week:
I also heard scholar Martha Hodes speak to my Women Writing Women’s Lives seminar about her book My Hijacking. Hodes is historian who applied her research expertise to her own past, excavating her experience of being a hostage on a hijacked plane as a child in 1970. Her talk blended the personal and global with great compassion and complexity. She is close to my age and her childhood in New York City is a hazy mirror to my own. I’m still in the middle of reading the book but I recommend it highly.
Then, in a bit of a swerve, I also watched Love, Gilda, a documentary about comedian Gilda Radner with my mother last night. We stumbled on it while lying on her bed, flipping channels as we might have done in the 1970s when Radner was becoming a star on Saturday Night Live. It’s not a great film, but Radner had an extraordinary presence that’s visible even in the early home videos they show. It is easy to confuse Radner with her famous personas; the Gilda of this voiceover sounded like a new person.
I’m only halfway through the week, but feeling inspired by this range of women’s lives and work. Next week, I’ll be back with a more typical post about my father’s art career— in time for Father’s Day. I’ve been thinking about what I’ll do for content when I run out of my memoir to excerpt and this post may be one possible direction. If you’re interested in more NYC-based cultural recommendations, do let me know. And if you enjoy these posts, please like or share or leave a comment! That’s how Substack tracks popularity and it helps me know you as readers. Thanks for your support!
Lovely post and I do enjoy your NYC and other cultural recommendations, Victoria- especially when they cross over to the UK!
Busy week - sounds lovely though! I feel the exact same way about Kathe Kollwitz. I fully support more New York art-related content...when you get to the end of your father's story, of course.