From among the dead
100 diptics
Photo prints on photochemical paper
30 x 42 cm each diptic (image + text)
2020
This post-photographic project is a homage to women artists of the past. Diana Larrea selected a series of 100 self-portraits of great women painters from the history of art, plotting a course through every period, from Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Impressionism, Post-impressionism and Modernism to some 20th-century Avant-garde Movements: Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism and New Objectivity.
Starting from this selection of self-portraits recovered from the past, Larrea digitally modified the files to present them anew as records from a phantasmagoria.
In the manner of simulated cyanotypes, Diana decided to transform the self-portraits of these painters into negatives and blue-tinted copies. The reference to the old cyanotype process links up with the magical origins of photography and is a reference to Anna Atkins (1799–1871), the British botanist considered to be the first female photographer in history.
The faces of the 100 historical women painters selected by Larrea appear in my project revealed in dark silhouettes, exhibited on paper as if they were visions of an apparition.
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