Miami Photo Fest Presents
Amy Gelb
As Is: Women exposed
Miami Photo Fest is pleased to team up with Daylight Books who will be presenting one of their latest release by Amy Gelb. The artist will be on hand for an intimate presentation, to answer questions, sign and dedicate their published works.
As Is: Women exposed,, consists of female nudes made in a studio setting without artifice or glamour.
Amy Gelb's plain-spoken, yet graceful portraits invite the viewer to engage in a conversation about women, self-image, and how we define true beauty.
"This body of work is my call to action. A response to the spoken and unspoken messages women receive around their bodies, their self-worth, and the responsibility to be beautiful. ... Why do women feel the responsibility to try to be beautiful in the first place? Why can't we shift the conversation away from being beautiful toward what is meaningful and purposeful about our bodies?" – Amy Gelb
By cropping closely into her subjects, Gelb literalizes the compartmentalization of the female form and recreates the fragmentation of a woman's identity. Her subjects are anonymous and are free to express themselves fully without fear of consequence.
Gelb photographed actresses, physicians, politicians, journalists, activists, mothers, cancer survivors, rape survivors, waitresses, lawyers, trans women, lesbians, women from an array of religious beliefs, agnostics, atheists, and women of different races and nationalities. During the photo shoot, most women shared their feelings about their bodies and the majority told Gelb a "Me Too" story.
Gelb's only guidelines for each photo session is that she will not "beautify" her subjects digitally, she will photograph them in natural light, and they will remain anonymous, shot from chin to pubic bone. "By placing the torso in a block of its own, we have the freedom to examine the nuances of the feminine form with less judgment and are able to see if it alters our vision of ourselves," Gelb writes. Every woman is given 24 hours to change her mind about participating in the project. Few women backed out.
Daylight is a nonprofit organization dedicated to publishing art and photography books. By exploring the documentary mode along with the more conceptual concerns of fine art, Daylight’s uniquely collectible publications work to revitalize the relationship between art, photography, and the world at large.