Being in Pictures: An Intimate Photo Memoir
“Joanne Leonard will play an important role in the history of 20th-century culture, art, and photo history for her daring and innovative subject matter . . . her complex and multi-layered works address women’s life narratives, twinship, dementia, miscarriage, parenting, and the stages and conditions of female subjectivity.”\ —Griselda Pollock, University of Leeds\ Being in Pictures: An Intimate Photo Memoir interweaves the extraordinary photography and collage work of artist Joanne Leonard...
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“Joanne Leonard will play an important role in the history of 20th-century culture, art, and photo history for her daring and innovative subject matter . . . her complex and multi-layered works address women’s life narratives, twinship, dementia, miscarriage, parenting, and the stages and conditions of female subjectivity.”—Griselda Pollock, University of LeedsBeing in Pictures: An Intimate Photo Memoir interweaves the extraordinary photography and collage work of artist Joanne Leonard with personal narrative to reveal the creative possibilities of feminist art. Leonard’s early photographs were largely documentary, capturing scenes from inner-city Oakland and the Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan. As her art evolved she began to challenge the boundary between personal and public images, and her work turned to autobiographical and daringly intimate themes, including a failed marriage, a miscarriage, single motherhood, her identity as twin and daughter of a Jewish immigrant, and the problems of aging and memory. Leonard’s evocative and often dreamlike creations reveal “the tensions between realism and idealization, photography and fantasy.” These are pictures that both capture and re-create life in images that are haunting, tender, heartbreaking, and sometimes shocking—but always completely true.Russell T. Clement - Library JournalLeonard's (art history & women's studies, Univ. of Michigan) autobiographical photographs and photo collages, evocatively and eloquently reproduced here, explore the themes of family, childhood, life stages, and woman as nurturer. This photographic and textual journal covers 40 years of Leonard's life, from early photos she took in West Oakland, CA, in the 1960s to her family and friends, relationships and separations, a chance encounter with Diane Arbus, the 1972 Sapporo Olympics, motherhood, feminist influences and tendencies, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Imagery ranges from cozy familial scenes to harrowing and violent series on sex, male domination, and miscarriage. The text carries Leonard's story along and helpfully comments on the images. An artist's chronology, with exhibitions and publications, concludes the work. Leonard is a leading artist, scholar, and educator, and this first book-length examination of her life and work resonates both poignantly and artistically. Recommended for contemporary photography and women's studies collections; at $35, a real bargain.
\ Library JournalLeonard's (art history & women's studies, Univ. of Michigan) autobiographical photographs and photo collages, evocatively and eloquently reproduced here, explore the themes of family, childhood, life stages, and woman as nurturer. This photographic and textual journal covers 40 years of Leonard's life, from early photos she took in West Oakland, CA, in the 1960s to her family and friends, relationships and separations, a chance encounter with Diane Arbus, the 1972 Sapporo Olympics, motherhood, feminist influences and tendencies, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Imagery ranges from cozy familial scenes to harrowing and violent series on sex, male domination, and miscarriage. The text carries Leonard's story along and helpfully comments on the images. An artist's chronology, with exhibitions and publications, concludes the work. Leonard is a leading artist, scholar, and educator, and this first book-length examination of her life and work resonates both poignantly and artistically. Recommended for contemporary photography and women's studies collections; at $35, a real bargain.\ —Russell T. Clement\ \ \
