"The Outwin 2016" Finalist: Wendy Arbeit
Out of over 2,500 entries in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, 43 artists have their work shown in the exhibition “The Outwin 2016: American Portraiture Today.” Read more about one of the finalists, Wendy Arbeit.
What made you decide to depict this sitter as you did?
I was inspired to create my latest project, called “The Past Becomes Present,” because I love, and have always loved, old photographs and objects. When looking at old photos, I generally assumed that because times were different, that people were different. I also assumed that everyone back then seemed to look alike, and that there was no real diversity.
However, while conducting research for reference images for my recent project called “A Moment in Time,” I looked at a significant number of Victorian portraits and was surprised at how many photos seem to transcend place and time. I was particularly captivated by 13 tintype headshot portraits featuring women from the 1860’s and 1870’s. Once I looked past the period elements, I was awestruck at the incredible variety of expressions in their faces and individuality expressed through dress and hair. They possessed an intangible sparkle. Surprisingly, they were not only very different from each other, but they looked like women I would see today.
How did your work develop from idea to execution?
I decided that I would bring the women into 2015, into a world where they could fully express themselves. Without any knowledge of their background or histories (other than knowing that I bought their portraits online from someone in Canada), I experimented with different hairstyles, makeup, and names to give them modern personas. My challenge was to stay authentic to what I imagine to be their true selves, to capture their individual looks and real personalities. I wanted to play with how identity is fluid/dynamic and how it is static; I wanted to explore how the time in which we live does to some extent determine our personality, as we are unavoidably shaped by our context and experiences.
To merge the tintype with modern technology, I scanned the gem tintypes (1” x ¾”) and used simple, free online styling transformation applications and Adobe Photoshop. The results were startling: after spending so much time working with the women’s 2015 looks, it was actually surprising to look at the originals again! And I found that when I looked at the women’s original images, I wanted to know them; when I made them into people I’d see every day, I felt like I did know them.
Each of the 13 women has their own look and attitude. For example, “Morgan” is my modern day hipster. When I looked into her soulful eyes, I immediately felt that there was a coolness to her, an edginess. I picture her living today in a big city, sporting funky hair, listening to indie music. “Val” today is androgynous and bold, a modern, tattooed activist, perhaps a vegan. “Taylor” is my rebellious teenager who smokes and sneaks out of school. However, my ultimate goal is that the viewer creates his/her own stories and imagined realities for these women.
What relationship do the materials have to the meaning?
I found that my project comments on how an era is truly defined by its technology. Utilizing available modern technology, “The Past Becomes Present” is just as much a reflection on the present as it is a contemplation of the past. By enlarging tiny images, I saw details and was able to study the women’s faces in a closeness that they weren’t intended for; in a way I exposed them, as social media today exposes us.
The specific computer applications were key in my project. When I received the portraits, the women were already frozen in a precise moment in time, but I did the very same thing: I froze them too, but in 2015. The computer applications that I used were not available in the past, and will change in the future. However, although today Photoshop is often used to manipulate images unrealistically, I didn’t take the alterations too far: my objective was not to airbrush the women or make them into something or someone that they weren’t, but rather to realistically portray how they would look today.
Moreover, the personalities that I conjured, such as a hipster and tattooed activist, are from this specific moment in time: if I conducted the same experiment in another decade (past or future), I would reimagine the women differently, in ways I cannot comprehend with my current knowledge. In the future my modernization of these women will itself become dated/outdated. An interesting experiment would be to “update” them again in 10 years and see how their envisioned personalities and looks will change.
How does the piece fit within your larger body of work?
“The Past Becomes Present” fits into my larger investigation into the human experience of identity and belonging. I address the idea of one’s place in the world as a personal, subjective experience, but also on a grander, universal scale and in a certain construct of space and time. Much of my work is autobiographical to some extent, so this was a departure. However, in a way this project IS very personal, because I am using my own bias and imagination to assign these women personalities, when someone else would maybe envision them differently.
“The Past Becomes Present” is the second time that I have used historical images in my work, and it was inspired while conducting research for my most recent project, “A Moment in Time.” Both projects are very much intertwined: in “A Moment in Time,” I looked inward at my own identity and questioned where I fit in if had I lived in the past; in “The Past Becomes Present,” I look outward, and explore the identities of historical strangers if they lived in the present.
You can see Arbeit’s work in “The Outwin 2016: American Portraiture Today,” up now through Jan. 8, 2017. Also, be sure to vote in our People’s Choice Competition.
