Tormented III
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- Tormented III
- 1980
- gelatin silver print
- 39,5 × 29,5 cm
Teresa Gierzyńska’s best-known series “About Her” comprises over 100 works. It proposes investigation of or introspection regarding female identity, a mystical version of feminism, with the photographs being accompanied by adjectives that provide these pictures with meaningful titles: “Dangerous,” “Independent,” “Unapproachable,” “Mature,” “Cold,” “Worried,” “Thirty Years Old,” “Useless,” “Left-handed,” “Velvety,” “Caresses,” “Full of Hope.” The artist used her own body as well as few models in order to stage solitary scenes capable of expressing universal states of female existence. Some of these works were created using a mirror, while others were done with a self-timer. In both cases, the artist expressed her own agency in forming the image of a woman. Gierzyńska also used an aniline dye to add color to these compositions—rendering the prints themselves mere starting points for a painterly treatment. This allowed her to further emphasize the emotional states depicted in the pictures. Most of these photographs were taken in a bathroom or bedroom—places designated for women—as spaces of alienation. In “About Her,” Gierzyńska probes these spaces and shows how they can become locuses of self-expression and emancipation. D.M.