Women Looking at Women Looking at Women: Reclaiming Histories of Women in the Arts and Proposing Models to Facilitate Future Friendships
The booklet 'Women Looking at Women' by Annemarie Wadlow examines the ways women artists come together to collectively investigate their own image. It delves into various histories of feminist collective art practice and focuses on how women claim agency of their image through collaborations which connect intergenerational and long-distance friendships.
Each chapter features artistic and theoretical case studies that discuss images produced by women artists, about women artists; proposing that to gaze upon someone represented with care and autonomy provides more affirmative ways to relate to ourselves. It discovers that to pay homage to overlooked knowledge of women artists builds a case for the artist as researcher. Only by engaging in both roles can we unveil what is not taught in the mainstream and inspire a more inclusive, generous future.
Each aspect of the book’s design is a collaborative endeavour, expanding the notion of individual authorship. It is with this sentiment that creating the publication became research in itself, via collaboration with both direct peers and an extended genealogy.
Wadlow examines four visual case studies: 'L'atelier des femmes peintres' (1833) by Phillippe-Jacques van Bree, 'Photographers at the Ovular' (1980) by Joan E. Biren, Carmen Winant's photobook 'Notes on Fundamental Joy' (2019), and the poetic essay 'Women as Columns of Pillars' (2019) by Josephine Mead.
Softcover, 156 p, ills colour & bw, 11 x 19 cm, pb, English, 2022.
