Master Rituals II: Weston's Nudes | 2020
Deconstructing Edward Weston’s Nudes in the form of self-portraits, the artist Tarrah Krajnak inserts herself as both author and subject into Weston’s original work. Replicating the poses of models Bertha Wardell, Charis Wilson, and others, she sits before the camera with a shutter release in hand, her body depicted beyond the boundaries of Weston’s original fragmentation, confronting the lens with a light meter, a gas mask, a defiant gaze. Krajnak’s critical homage subverts not only the decidedly male compositional apparatus behind Weston’s figure studies – her control of the frame foregrounds the agency of the posing women – but also the ideal of white female beauty central to Weston’s work and its historical appreciation. Awarded the Jury Prize of the Louis Roederer Discovery Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles in 2021, Master Rituals II: Weston’s Nudes interjects itself as commentary into the photographic canon while existing on its own as an independent work of masterful concept, execution, and expression.