Articles / Reviews
Women: The Work of Iris Klein
Indeed, many of Klein's photographs allow us to project onto and through the imperfect bodily configurations of her "models" anxieties and half-conscious desires about ourselves. The series "Excerpts from the Bedroom" seemingly depict a woman's self-abandonment which offer her, again in the tradition of the erotic photograph, as "to be taken"; but this is as much about our fantasy as "hers," for we are after all dealing with a life sized doll here; or are we? Would our act of projection be diminished if the doll were replaced with a live model? Why are we willing to recognize (and thereby affirm the title of) the "Alte Frau" as an old woman? This "recognition" speaks as much to familiar and by now iconographic representations of old women with shopping carts as to our own anxieties about age and bag ladies. Conversely, "Jenny" posed very much alone in a "natural" landscape pointedly wishes to be seen, her concern is not only to look as attractive as possible while being utterly alone, but to offer herself at this precise moment to the camera, to the gaze which is strangely present inside the deserted "natural" landscape.