Jennifer Zimmer: self-portraits
October 9, 2008
Rather than focusing on the face or the skin, the bodies float surrounded negative white space. The whole body ends up speaking about the subject in the photo. Some people are precise, really balled up and covering their face, while others are almost splayed out, not sure how they should be.
Although the pieces do work individually, Zimmer says that seeing them together gives the viewer a better sense of everything that’s going on in the images. The repetition of the images is meant to convey a sense of how similar we are, and how slight individuality is.
Each image also features a prominent shutter release cable. The cable ended up creating a stronger metaphor of reproduction as a sort of umbilical cord, while at the same time allowing the person to reproduce their image artificially.
“They are kind of highly detailed portraits. And because they’re black and white, it’s very much just about the reductive quality of the tone—the masculine sterility of it, as opposed to noticing the pretty purple colour someone’s wearing. It’s more about the form of the little human figure.”
Zimmer’s self-portrait series will be on display from Tue October 14 – Sat October 18 at Halifax’s Anna Leonowens Gallery as part of Halifax’s Photopolis festival of photography.
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