Exercise: Masquerades

The second project of this part of the course looks at masquerades – using yourself to say something about something else.  For this exercise we are asked to look at the work of two photographers, Nikki S. Lee and Trish Morrissey, and then to respond to some questions.

Nikki S. Lee

Nikki S. Lee is an American (of Korean origin) who is interested in moulding her identity to fit her surroundings.  Cited in Bright (2010) she says that

‘I am interested in identity as it is affected or changed through social contexts, cultural categories or personal relationships.  This interest began through personal experience.  I realised that I changed between my surroundings in New York and Seoul, depending on whether I was with my friends or family’.

(Bright, p. 211)

More performance artist than photographer in my view, Lee adopts a disguise for her various projects (for example The Hispanic Project, The Seniors Project, the Skateboarders Project), and then infiltrates herself into a group of similar people in her new guise, spending several weeks as part of the group, joining in with their activities and all the while being photographed by other people under her direction in a snapshot style (Museum of Contemporary Photography).

Question: Is there any sense in which Lee’s work could be considered voyeuristic or even exploitative?  Is she commenting on her own identity, the group identity of the people she photographs, or both?

By infiltrating herself into a specific social community in order to photograph them and allow viewers an intimate look at the lives of other people I would consider Lee’s work to be voyeuristic, albeit not in the sinister way often associated with the term. Whether her work could be considered exploitative depends on the circumstances of each infiltration and shoot.  If the members of the group she has temporarily joined are not aware she is an artist and are not complicit with her project, this could be viewed as exploitation.  If the group is aware of who she is and what her intentions are, then I wouldn’t consider Lee’s work to be exploitative.

I think that Lee’s work comments on both her and the group’s identity.  One can see Lee’s Korean ethnicity in her images but through her disguise and subsequent acceptance into the group she makes the statement that she can move easily between cultures; her identity changes through relationships with others and is accepted (in whichever guise she is in at the time) by the group she is with.  The fact that she can blend into a group so easily makes a comment on the group’s identity, namely that groups do conform to a stereotype to a certain extent, both in how they behave and how we perceive them.

Trish Morrissey

Like Lee, Morrissey is interested in notions of identity.  In her series Front (2005 – 2007) she has approached families on the beach, borrowed the clothes of one of the women present and then taken her place in the family group, asking the woman concerned to take a photograph of the family using Morrissey’s camera (already carefully set up by Morrissey).

The images look realistic with Morrissey appearing to fit in seamlessly into the group each time, swapping her identity for a short time with that of the woman she has replaced.  In fact there is a role swap here also, with Morrissey becoming a family member and the woman becoming the artist.

In her artist’s statement, Morrissey explains that by using the beach and family groups, the latter marking out their own personal territory on the former, Front looks at what happens when both physical and psychological boundaries are crossed.   Similar to Lee, she demonstrates that she can mould her identity to fit her surroundings and be happily accepted (albeit for a short period of time) by the group of people she has chosen to join.

Question:  Would you agree to Morrissey’s request if you were enjoying a day on the beach with your family?  If not, why not?

Yes I would agree.  I wouldn’t find it intrusive as Morrissey is obviously creating a performance, a project of some kind which it would be fun to be a part of.  Also, as the female in my family most likely to be chosen for the ‘identity swap’, I would be interested in swapping roles myself and using Morrissey’s large format camera!

We are also asked to look at two of Morrissey’s projects:

Seven Years

Based on the conventions of the family snapshot, Morrissey has constructed a series of fictional family scenes appearing to be from the 1970s, using herself and her elder sister, both dressed in period clothing and using appropriate props, to assume different family characters and roles in each image.  The body language in the photographs appears quite awkward, with Morrissey in her role as director deliberately mimicking the stereotypical family album and showing the tensions that she believes are inherent in all families (Morrissey, n.d.).  Interestingly there are no explanatory captions to the images, just the date as a title, thus forcing the viewer to make their own decisions as to why a particular scene is important to Morrissey.

I wonder whether Morrissey, like Gillian Wearing, is questioning her own self and is seeking to understand the role of her family on the formation of her identity through constructing a history which never was or perhaps what she would have liked it to have been.

The Failed Realist

The Failed Realist is a series of head and shoulder self-portraits of Morrissey made in collaboration with her five-year old daughter who enjoyed face painting but who would rather paint her mother’s face  than be painted herself.  The painting is clumsy and is a failed attempt by the child to portray what is in her head (eg Ladybird, Party Girl, Spotty Cat), hence the title of the series.

I am not really sure of the point that Morrissey is trying to make with this work.  The use of the paint as a form of mask creates a barrier between Morrissey and her daughter – is Morrissey saying that as adults we hide behind masks of our own making, presenting ourselves to the outside world in the way that we wish others to see us whilst a child does not have these self-imposed restrictions?  It is also noticeable that some of the paintings in the series have dark and sinister undertones and I have the feeling that Morrissey is deliberately inviting a comparison with the innocence of the young child that is painting them.

References:

Lee, N. S. (n.d.) Projects  [online images].  Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects.  Available from http://www.tonkonow.com/lee.html  [accessed 12 January 2015]

Morrissey, T. (2005 – 2007) Front [online images].  Trish Morrissey.  Available from http://www.trishmorrissey.com/works_pages/work-front/workpg-01.html [accessed 14 January 2015]

Morrissey, T. (n.d.) Front – Statement [online].  Trish Morrissey.  Available from http://www.trishmorrissey.com/works_pages/work-front/statement.html [accessed 14 January 2015]

Morrissey, T. (2001 – 2004) Seven Years [online images].  Trish Morrissey.  Available from  http://www.trishmorrissey.com/works_pages/work-sy/workpg-01.html  [accessed 14 January 2015]

Morrissey, T. (n.d.) Seven Years – Statement [online].  Trish Morrissey.  Available from  http://www.trishmorrissey.com/works_pages/work-sy/statement.html    [accessed 14 January 2015]

Morrissey, T. (n.d.) The Failed Realist [online images].  Trish Morrissey.  Available from http://www.trishmorrissey.com/works_pages/work-tfr/workpg-01.html  [accessed 14 January 2015]

Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago (n.d.)  Artist: Lee, Nikki S. [online].  Available from http://www.mocp.org/detail.php?t=objects&type=browse&f=maker&s=Lee%2C+Nikki+S.&record=0#collection-search    [accessed 12 January 2015]