Kathy Grove

Photogenic beauty is not only without lines or blemishes, it is also one without volume, without three-dimensional bone structure -- sometimes everything is erased except for the exaggerated dark eyes and the shinning red lips. Desire in the realm of representation is so inextricably linked to the effaced woman, that an image of woman that has not undergone this erosion does not signify as an object of desire. Grove subjects Dorthea Lange's famous photograph Migrant Mother, Nipopmo, California, 1936 to this process of erosion: taking away the lines and moles from her face along with the holes and the dirt in her children's clothing. Two things happen simultaneously - the migrant farm worker, living in a tent with her three small children disappears along with her real life problems. She is replaced by a woman with whom we feel a greater familiarity, but one we could never meet -- she has become the woman of the Calvin Klein ads with tow-headed children in tweedy clothes. In Lange's version Florence Thompson may have been viewed through a veil of sentimentality, but only when the dirt and worry are airbrushed away is the image read as a-woman-to-be-looked-at.

About the Artist:
Kathy Grove was born in 1948 in Pittsburgh. She received a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design and an M.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Parts of "The Other Series" have been the subject of solo exhibits at Pace/MacGill Gallery, P.P.O.W. Gallery, and the University Art Museum of California State University at Long Beach. In 1997 she was the recipient of the "Anonymous Was a Woman Award." She now lives in New York City.

Introductory Essay by Jo Anna Isaak / Pictures from the Exhibition / List of Works / Excerpts of Essays included in the Catalog / History of the Exhibition / How to order a print copy of the catalog / About the Curator / Website Credits