The Exposure Project: Erica Allen's Untitled Gentlemen

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Erica Allen's Untitled Gentlemen

Women in Photography is currently featuring Erica Allen's series Untitled Gentlemen - a project that, through photographic mediation, aims to explore issues of identity in contemporary portraiture. The images that Allen uses as her inspiration are "faces from contemporary barbershop hairstyle posters combined with figures from discarded studio photographs." In her statement she affirms:

"Existing between the real and artificial, these images are made effective by creating an expressive ambiguity in an unexpected context. In subverting the meaning and expectations of the traditional studio portrait, the images create an unknown narrative and visual tension that play with the viewer’s perception of the work.

The ambiguous expressions captured in these barbershop portraits inherit a vulnerable quality when placed inside the familiar frame of the studio portrait. In this new context, these once primarily functional photographs become unusually candid and passive representations of masculinity. Paired with figures from historical and contemporary found photographs, these men adopt new identities and are recognized as individuals, while remaining anonymous; identified by the hairstyle number originally found on the barbershop posters."