Katy Grannan: The Westerns
The Photographers’ Gallery, London
TO LAUNCH its new premises, in Ramilies Street, London W1 – just off Oxford Circus – the Photographers’ Gallery has chosen to feature the large-scale colour images by the American photographer Katy Grannan. It is an inspired choice, given that Grannan’s theme is women who are searching for an identity – a challenge facing the gallery as it establishes itself in a new location.
Grannan’s images are set against the sunshine and heat of the west coast of America, an area that is attributed with almost mythical status as a destination for rugged individualists, for people ready to risk everything in a question for opportunity and reinvention.
With the beach and a flower-filled meadow providing some of the backdrops, there is a powerful sense of nature infusing these images, but, however heat-infused the scenery, it is the characters who are both the real and metaphorical subject of Grannan’s work.
One series focuses on Gail and Dale, two middle-aged transsexuals and best friends, who in one image, Gail and Dale (Best Friends), lie together on the beach, cuddling with affection rather than any suggestion of sexual interest. But what is so intriguing is the fact that these two are wearing almost similar clothing – red skirts worn above their knees, blue blouses, high heels – identical in virtually all respects, save that one is blonde, one is brunette.
In one sense, they are acting out femininity – the lipstick, the nail varnish, pretending to be female, living in a half world of make-believe and fantasy, their gender seemingly as much performance as real. Yet, however cosily the two snuggle up together, implying close friendship, there is a deep sense of unease in their play-acting. We are never quite sure whether we should smile patronisingly or feel disturbed by the sentimental display.
Even in the individual portraits of the women, there is a sense of disquiet. In Dale, Pacifica (1), Dale lies on the damp-looking sand against a backdrop of the rolling ocean, dressed for all the world in a matronly dress and suede high heels, more at ease in the Women’s Institute than reclining incongruously on a beach. The horizontal pose, the leaden sky and the blank look make for a troubled portrait.
Another series features Nicole. In it, she is almost unrecognisable from one image to the next, moving with beguiling ease from blond bombshell to boyish teenager. The camera mirrors her ever-changing and reinvented persona. In one image, she cavorts amid a meadow filled with yellow flowers. In another picture, on a bed, a character that resists any easy sort of label.
Technically, the work investigates the tense relationship between the carefully posed, fixed photographic portraiture and the shifting, unpredictable individual identities. It makes use of the conventions of the camera to capture the instant image while the subject defies such pinning down.
Dreams and reality exist in awkward parallel in Katy Grannan’s work as she depicts a world that is private and personal, yet here made public. By intruding on it she helps create it and it is up to us to attempt to distinguish between fact and fiction.
Emmanuel Cooper
Katy Grannan: The Westerns continues until February 8 2009
