Big Girls, Large Format Photographs by Women Photographers

Pinar Yolaçan | Heli Rekula

It’s not really clear if the title is meant to refer to women who use large format cameras (it seems not all in the show do), who make large prints (not all do), or whether the women in the pictures are large (some are.) Whatever the case this summer group show provides an interesting buffet of photographers from which to sample. Perhaps most interesting is the work of Pinar Yolaçan, whose work can also currently be seen in the Greater New York Show at PS1. Large women are essentially upholstered into large, feminine, prehistoric-looking sculptural objects. Partly fetish, partly furniture and partly well appointed body-bags, the photos present a vision that is highly personal, charged and frankly weird. No less strange is a large allegorical scene by Meghan Boody. With all the complexity of an Academic painting of the 19th century, and with a highly resolved image, the scene is perhaps one of the artist’s most realistic looking pictures yet. The hand made frame is rescued from silliness by that eyeball staring out from the top.

Finally, the artist’s book “Hair Loss (2007)” by Bea Nettles, documenting the artist’s struggle against cancer in a series of head-on self portraits, is small, concise and entirely unsentimental.

Reviewer #1