Ok, I discovered this ad yesterday while watching ‘The Office’ on hulu, I almost walked out of the room as it ran, and then Anna Gaskell’s name floated across the screen and all I could do was sit dumbfounded at the fact that I was watching the Anna Gaskell sit on a stool and talk about her work; suggesting that her lifestyle as a fine art photographer somehow correlates with the Gap image.
At first, I was just really confused, if you are familiar with Anna's work, a bodysuit of denim just doesn't come to mind when considering her subjects and photographs.
Actually, all her work tends to draw on the dementia of constructions within storytelling, highlighting the plight of female subjects being manipulated and pulled apart by other female characters. Gaskell's photographic series By Proxy investigates the re-imagining of a world as from a mother suffering Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Her Wonder and Override series fragments and reconstructs imagery inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, but by avoiding the literal nature of Carroll’s story, Gaskell’s imagery suggests that one has gone down the ‘rabbit hole’ so to speak and there really is no way out. The settings she chooses often include over-embellished interiors that both suggest and highlight the entrapments of domesticity sickly entwined with the need for story-telling and narcissism. In these spaces the anonymous characters interact through ambiguous scenarios that could be interpreted as either playing with one another, or tearing one another apart; as with an image in which hands are reaching into the frame and tugging at the tights of a little girl. Often using candlelight as her light source within these decorative interiors, Gaskell manages to have a conversation with the past histories of women and domestic space, while considering the contemporary issues of women's plight in motherhood and childhood: both subjects often neglected in contemporary culture where childhood has all but disappeared and motherhood no longer carries the accolades of the past.
Gap's entire image just seems to
I suppose she looks the part.
wow - I wonder what would happen if the Gap wanted to pay you money to advertise on this blog so you could continue to enlighten people with your ideas on photography.
ReplyDeleteIts a little easy to call someone a sell-out - don't you think?
Amy- I suppose it is a little juvenile to call her a sell-out, also my blog ended up as the #1 Google spot when searching for 'Anna Gaskell gap ad' and I respect her work, obviously. So, to avoid really offending anyone, least of which is Anna herself, I considered your comment and thought it best to remove the statement about selling-out.
ReplyDeleteJust FYI, I don't think I would ever have ads on my site, nor would I ever be in a Gap ad unless it's for the Gap (Red) program or something similar.