Black chamber

The artist and photographer Anna Nordquist Andersson has for many years been interested in the photographic gaze and its gender coding. In a seemingly simple but yet very intricate image study she deconstructs the prejudice of the male gaze. The concept of deconstruction is here for once completely in effect - it is exactly what Andersson does. Her method is to see through, elucidate and in various ways ask questions about underlying structures. In her latest work 'Black Chamber' she reuses photographs, media images and texts as readymades. Her starting point is the old ads and magazine pages from camera manufactures during the 60s and 70s such as Hasselblad, Nikon, Canon, Olympus and others. All ads are from the American magazine LIFE, famous for its photojournalism. What interested her when she started working with this material, was the clearly male language in the ads that unabashedly targeted at a male consumer. This is Canon's slogan: 'Finally, an SLR camera that even your wife can use'. Another example: 'Where man goes, there goes the Hasselblad'. Her method is a photogram, they are contact printed so that both sides are superimposed in a single image, which then resembles an x-ray. The work involves conceptual work on what's under the surface and thus shed light on important issues.