Daily Self-Portraits 1972-1973

Le livre

Entre décembre 1972 et août 1973, la photographe Melissa Shookproduit une série d?autoportraits quotidiens dans son appartement new-yorkais. Animée par la volonté de se représenter à traversson propre regard et par l?obsession de garder sa mémoire vivante et intacte pour sa fille, elle expérimente avec les poses, les mises en scène et les humeurs, seule ou aux côtés de sa fille, d?amis ou de son chat, nue ou habillée. SiDaily Self-Portraits 1973-1973est un travail de mémoire particulièrement intime et personnel, c?est aussi un travail engagé, réalisé à un moment important de l?histoire pour la libération des corps féminins, contextualisé avec beaucoup de justesse par Sally Stein dans le texte qui accompagne la série.In December 1972, Melissa Shook (1939?2020) began a series of daily self-portraits in her Lower East Side apartment that she would continue until August 1973. Daily Self-Portraits 1972?1973 is the artist?s complete series of 192 photographs published together for the first time. With her medium format, black and white photographs, Shook captures herself in a variety of poses creating a more complete portrait than could be achieved with any one image. The photographs often include Shook?s daughter and the friends who populate her sphere. The viewer is introduced to the artist?s intimate domain and the mundanity of everyday existence comes to the forefront: nursing her ailing toe on the couch, sitting at the kitchen table with a friend, hair wrapped up in a towel post shower, dancing with her daughter. Rather than strictly embodying a typical vision of beauty, Shook?s poses are often imbued with irreverence and parody as a rejection of the tradition of female portraiture made from a male perspective. The book is astutely contextualized by Sally Stein?s essay highlighting the artist?s purposeful dismissal of the idea of a single, revelatory moment, opting instead for the extended serial portrait, with all its contradictions and complexity.