Supervisor: Dr. Lianne

Using the series, "dreams of life and death" (1994) by Saskatoon-based

photographer renda Francis Pelkey, 1 locate theories and strategies within the

author-text-spectatorship mode1 that allow for the existence of feminist

subjectivities and spectatorship positions. While this investigation is not an

exhaustive list of feminist strategies, 1 do focus upon three specific areas:

photography, autobiography, and spectatorship, but only investigate very

specific elements within each that are pertinent to Pelkey's series. Using tableau

photography, that is, the obviously constructed image, 1 argue that the theatrical

quality of Pelkey's photographs comes mainly from the way she lights her

images before she photographs them. is stage-like appearance created by her

use of movie lights draws attention to the photograph-as-construction and this

e photograph being interpreted not as a document of "reality," but

rather, a product of the artistrs imagination.

Tableau photography works in concert with autobiography, specifically,

textual components that articulate her memories through personal narratives.

Pelkey is able to give "voice" to her experiences. While her tableaux images

draw the spectators to and into her art, she manipulates the language in three

key ways so as to appeal to the viewer's imagination. By only presenting

fragments of memories, viewers feel cornpelled to add to the story she has

begun, or relate her memories to their own experiences. Second, by using a

confessional tone in her text Pelkey irnmediately creates an intirnate relationship

e of Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1:

Chapter 2:

Chapter 3:

Conclusion

ibliography

Appendices

A n overview of the argument

The rnethodological foundation and

defining subjectivity

Tableau photography and the use of text

for formulating feminist subjectivities

Producing ferninist spectatorship positions

in "drearns of life and death"

Tableau photography, persona1 narratives, and

spectatorship as feminist strategies

O Brenda Francis Pelkey

Al1 reproductions are from Brenda Francis Pelkey's series "dreams of life and death," which was exhibited

in the Gordon Snelgrove Gallery, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK (1994).

Original arhvork is in colour. The series is printed on ilfochrome

and mounted on sintra with a lustex laminate.

stration 2

installation view "drearns of life and death," (specifically,field and yard)

graveyard triptych; 75 cm x 137 cm

wa ter triptych; 60 cm x 78 cm

field triptych; 51 cm x 143 cm

yard diptych; 125 cm x 175 cm

yard etail of text panel

telephone booth triptych; 91.5 cm x 179 cm

pole

tree

tree

triptych; 101.5 cm x 181 cm 86

triptych; 92 cm x 250 cm 87

etail of text panel 88

I would like to express my sincere thanks to the following people who, in

various ways, assisted me during the researc ng, writing, editing, and the final

stages of completing my thesis. My supervisor, Dr. Lianne

initial explorations, and throughout the various drafts, provided insightful and

valuable feedback. I also appreciated her flexibility; this permitted me to balance

my writing with my part-time teaching career with Camosun College's Visual

Arts Department. In the final stages of my thesis, my second reader, Dr.

g, expressed an enthusiasm for my research that was

motivating and sustaining. Her coments and suggestions for editing and

improving the writing were most helpful. Also, thanks to Dr.

for the advice on how to balance and integrate theory with analysis --and for her

rigorous editing! e secretary of the istory in Art Department,

liot, made the final stages of preparing to defend much easier

Other people that need to be thanked include

only do I consider my photographic education with her to be one of the most

rewarding aspects of my visual arts education, but as well, she has continued to

be a mentor. For my thesis, she provided me with bibliographic information and

sent slides of her work, which have been extremely useful.

y, I am grateful for their unfailing support of my art historical

and creative endeavors; they will never know how much it has meant to me. M y

graduate colleagues, especially Ric

ley, have continually set the mark higher for me; 1 would also like

to thank them for their encouragement and their friendship. And finally to my

g--the love of my life--who both encourages and helps me

to plant and nurture my "impossible gardens." s "impossible garden" is for

him.

ction: An ovetview of t

Laura Mulvey argued in "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (1973)

ollywood films, images of women and the narrative itself are

constructed for a male spectator, that is, the spectator position is 'masculinized'

regardless of the viewer's gender. Generally, women hold minor roles within the

film text, their importance being reduced to functioning as the catalyst for the

leading male's action, and to be the sex object for the male gaze. Mulvey posits

that there are only two spectatorship positions for women: female viewers can

either have a transvestite experience where they identify with the male hero of

the film, or a sadomasochistic experience where they relate to the females in the

text who are, by the film's conclusion, controlled and contained within the

ulvey states that what is needed is the destruction of the patriarchal

pleasure of looking and the enjoyment associated with it at the expense of

female objectification. By avoiding and not using strategies of representation,

"Woman" cannot be used for male erotic visual pleasure. The problem,

however, is that forgoing the codes of representation would result in an outright

rejection of representations of women. If Mulvey's suggestions were to be

implemented, women might never appear in films.

In her "Afterthoughts on 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,"' she

pursues two other lines of thought: what she refers to as "the women in the

audience issue" and "the melodrarna issue."' In relation to the female viewers in

the audience, Mulvey asks if female spectators are simply carried along by the

Laura Mulvey, "Afterthoughts on 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' inspired by Duel in the Sun," E. A n . Kaplan, ed., Psychoanalysis & Cinema, (New York/London: Routledge, 1990), 24.

text, or if women's pleasure is more complex. en female spectators are faced

'masculinized' film narratives, Mulvey questions if woman simply cannot

relate to this narrative and derive pleasure, or do some women find pleasure

identifying with the hero, enjoying the action and control he has in the narrative.

For "the melodrama issue" (which is the focus of her "Afterthoughts ..."), Mulvey

examines how a female protagonist occupying the center of the narrative is

represented as unable to achieve a stable sexual identity in the film, oscillating

between passive femininity and aggressive masculine characteristics, and how

this inability to achieve this identity is echoed by the woman spectator's

masculine 'point of vie^'.^ e problem here is that Mulvey's research seeks

women protagonists and spectators who have stable sexual identities. While I

recognize Mulvey's early work in film theory as being important first steps to

understanding how narratives are constructed and the positioning of spectators,

I feel limited by the conclusions she reaches about feminist subjectivities and

spectatorship positions in film texts. There must be examples of cultural texts that

illustrate the existence of feminist spectators and demonstrate ways in which

ferninist subjectivities can be formulated.

One such art series that 1 believe provides strategies for both is the work

by Saskatoon-based photographer Brenda Francis Pelkey, specifically, her 1994

series titled "dreams of life and death" (illustration 1). Pelkey's series illustrates

my argument that within the author-text-spectator relationship specific elements

from photography, autobiography, and spectatorship theory can be used to

create feminist subjects and spectators. Through specific creative choices and

manipulations of visual and textual information, Pelkey sets up and fosters a

Ibid., 25.

relationship between herself and the audience via the art work. In this way she

creates her own subjectivities and positions her audience so as to have them

relate to her as a subject, thereby occupying feminist spectatorship positions

regardless of their gender.

While the objective of my thesis is to demonstrate how photography,

autobiography, and spectatorship theory can be used as ferninist strategies to re-

write and re-present patriarchal notions of "Woman," there is nothing

intrinsically 'feminist' about these three areas. owever, using postmodern and

feminist theory, 1 have located specific elements, positions, and strategies within

these three areas that assist in the construction of feminist subjects and

spectators.

In Chapter One, 1 begin by introducing the theoretical base

investigations into these ree areas. I use postmodernist and feminist theory

because these models both critique and subvert representations of "Woman,"

and allow for the construction of feminist subjects. However, only certain kinds

of ferninisms can be used for these purposes: postmodern feminisms (such as

black feminism and lesbian feminism) recognize the necessity for diversity

among women and that ferninist meanings for "Woman" are not to be found,

but rather produced. Because representation is a field where social meanings are

constructed, it is one place that feminists can work to create new definitions and

understandings of women. Knowing the ways in which representations and

cultural myths are fashioned, that is, being aware of how codes and conventions

are used to construct meanings, artists are able to invoke and manipulate these

codes and conventions thereby denaturalizing ideology. Additionally, it is vital

that feminists do not define the female subject as stable and unitary since this

comes close to essentialism; rather, a postmodern feminist understanding of

subjectivities are as multiple and always changing, and it is this inability to pin

down one person's subjectivity that allows for the creation of feminist

subjectivities.

Female artists can contest dominant ideology which has positioned

"Woman" as an object who is immobile and silent, while simultaneously

producing feminist subjectivities. One of the most useful forms and mediums for

this activity is photography, specifically, a tableau approach to ph~tography.~

Chapter Two investigates how the tableau approach and aes

evidence of the artist's manipulation thereby drawing attention to his/her role in

the production of the photograph. As Randy radley states, there are three

different characteristics that signal the photograph as t ab lea~ .~ First, attention

can be drawn to the artifice of the photograph through details within the

photographic frame, such as the inclusion of studio lights and extension cords,

that indicate the photograph is a construction; second, photographic realism is

challenged by elements in the photograph that defy the laws governing time and

space, such as having more than one photographic moment represented; third,

e creation of visual ambiguity in the photograph, such as inconsistencies in

3 I am using the temn "tableau" to refer to photographs that are fabricated or comtructed with the intention of being photographed. While some would argue that in order for a photograph to be labeled as tableau, it must be very evident to the viewer that the set was constructed. I agree that some tableaux photographs are overtly staged such as the work of Sandy Skoglund, Boyd Webb, and Carol Condé and Karl Beveredge; however, this is only one aspect of tableau photography. Tableau cm also include more subtle approaches where the artist's hand in the production of the photograph is not so obvious, as in the pre-digital work of Jeff Wall.

4 It is not necessary that tableau photographs contain al1 three characteristics, nor is it imperative that these elements be used in overt ways. The importance is that the photograph be recognized as being produced in some manner.

scale, volume, or mass, hinders or somewhat problematizes the spectator's

immediate recognition of the subject matter presented because the realism of the

photograph is c~mpromised.~ These three characteristics prompt the viewer to

interpret the photograph not as a moment taken from reality, but rather as a

construction and product of the artist's imagination.

Pelkey's series belongs to the tableau approach because of the way she

makes evident her participation in the construction of the photographs.

approach to tableau is subtle; it is the way she uses spotlights in her images that

is the most prominent indicator or evidence of her fabricating the image. The

spotlights create the effect of dramatic stages which imply that what the viewer

sees is a construction rather than an objective photographie document.

Arnbiguity in relation to an exact historical moment is created within her

photographs, too. Although the photographs look as if they belong to our

present moment because of recognizable contemporary objects, the

accompanying text panels contradict the time frame by referring to the artist's

memories, that is, to the past. Are we in the present looking back, since al1

photographs are docments of a past moment in tirne, or are we seeing the

location in its present form but framed by past occurrences, as indicated by the

text?

Pelkey uses the tableau approach in a subtler manner than other tableaux

artists who use their own body upon the tableau stage--and whose use of

tableaux is overt in terms of constructing a 'reality', or performing before the

carnera, or just taking images of eir bodies. Unlike artists such as Cindy

Randy Bradley, "The Staged Photograph," Blackflash, vol. 7, no. 1, Spring 1989: 13.

Sherman and JO Spence, for example, who take images of their physical bodies,

Pelkey, in "dreams of life and death," does not use photographs of her form to

create her subjectivities. ather, she uses an absent/present body: it is physically

absent from the photographs but her subjectivities are present and presented to

the viewer through textual components located alongside her assembled

photographs. Thus the images of banal scenes and objects act as the starting

point for the viewer rather than being a visual reference for the artist's physical

body.

While the tableau approach to photography is important because it

enables artists to manipulate photographic elements to create specific readings

while simultaneously drawing attention to their role in this production, equally

significant is the final form of the photograph. e translation of actual people

and/or objects into a representational photograph transforms them into codes

and conventions. Knowing how these people, objects, and relationships between

the people/objects may be interpreted by the audience enables artists to plan

and execute their art so as to engage the spectator who, ideally, becomes an

active reader. Because the photograph is a text that operates within certain

systems of meaning, feminist artists, as manipulators of these representational

codes, are able to subvert patriarchal representations and construct feminist

subjectivities.

In conjunction with her tableaux images, Pelkey uses persona1 narratives.

Employing narratives is advantageous for feminist artists because laquage, like

visual representation, is a site where meanings are produced. Pelkey's memories

are articulated and presented through written text that accompanies each

assembled image. Elements from the autobiographical tradition, specifically, the

artist's persona1 narratives based on her memory, work to create a female

speaking subject. Since memories are not fixed but are like subjectivities in that

they are always in-progress and changing, using memory challenges the

essentialization of "Woman's" experiences as stable and fixed. Furthermore, it

challenges the Modernist assumption that the audience can "know" an artist

through personal narratives.

ee turns to spectatorship theory and examines the key roles

spectators play in completing feminist subjectivities from within feminist

spectatorship positions. The audience completes the processes of communication

by reading and interpreting the art work according to their own subjectivities.

According to Cultural Shidies, the viewer is understood as not solely shaped and

determined by discourse and does not have an essential core. Because of this

perception of the spectator, as socially-constituted, the viewer can generate

meanings or interpretations which may run counter to dominant ideology. In

this way, feminist spectatorship positions are possible. In order to produce these

positions, the creation of intersubjectivities between the artist and the audience,

whether the viewer is male or female, is necessary. This intersubjective

relationship creates an active spectator who identifies with the artist as a subject.

To foster this relationship, 1 argue that artists such as Pelkey have control over

how the cultural text is put together through their choice of art medium and

approach (tableau), subject matter, and using memories as the source of her

work. Pelkey initiates and fosters intersubjectivity by presenting textual

information based on her persona1 experiences. Furthermore, her story lines are

presented in fragmentary form which draw the audience into the art work by

encouraging them to add to the story by filling in the missing bits of

information. Pelkey further appeals to her viewers through her word choices

that engage their imaginations by stimulating their senses. While the visual (the

photograph) is the beginning point for the intersubjectivity, the accompanying

text appeals to as many of the viewers' senses as possible (sounds and smells, for

example). This helps to ground their experience of the artist's mernories in both

the material world and their own experiences.

While only exploring specific aspects of three particular areas, that is,

photography, autobiography, and spectatorship, this thesis introduces a few

strategies that allow for the creation and representation of feminist subjects and

spectatorship. at is not to say that these strategies can only be used by

feminists and/or for feminist projects. Rather, it is the ways in which certain

theories and aspects or elements from photography, autobiography, and

spectatorship are used in concert with one another that create ferninist subjects

and spectators. at is presented in the upcoming pages is not an exhaustive list

of the theoretical and creative possibilities for constructing feminist subjectivities

and spectatorship positions; rather, it is an introductory investigation that is

intended to locate and discuss strategies, mediums, and methods within one

artist's series of work that produce feminist subjects and subjectivities.

odological foun defining subjectivity

To locate a theoretical mode1 that can both critique representation and

offer strategies for artists to create feminist subjectivities, 1 argue that an effective

framework emerges from the partnering of two general theories, feminism and

postmodernism. Specifically, postmodernism brings to the alliance the critique of

representational practices without avoiding the use of representation, and

ferninism provides various ways of formulating feminist subjectivities without

losing sight of the material and political realm. Some background about the

patriarchal formation of the female subject and the historical understanding of

subjectivity is required, since the damage and negative effects of having feminist

subjectivities defined and controlled by dominant discourses is central to this

discussion.

While the oppression of women and minorities has occurred throughout

history, for the critical purposes of this thesis, it is necessary to look only as far

back as the eighteenth century (c. 1687 to 1789). It was during this early modern

time, now referred to as the period of Enlightenment, that a societal attitude

developed which placed faith in "Man's" capacity to reason. Reason became the

touchstone for investigating and evaluating the natural world and society. This

was the beginning of (small 'm') modernism6 which was a set of progressive

ideas in which the modern, that is, social, technological and cultural

developments, were not only welcomed, but emphasized. It was believed that

Small 'm' modemism refers to a philosophical position as well as an era that favoured industrial 'progress' while Modernism (with a capital 'M') pertains to an art period. Charles Harrison in Modern Art and Modernism (1983: 5) swnmarizes Modernist thought as being concerned with three basic principles: the specificity of aesthetic experience, the self sufficiency of the visual, and the teleological evolution of art autonomous from any other social causations or pressure.

through the use of science and reason, which yielded 'Tmth', people could know

and understand the world around them. Furthermore, various social changes

could be effected in the name of progress. Examples of the major movements

and events during this period of rnodernization include the rise of industrial

capitalism, science, and ~rbanization.~

Part of the modern examination of the world was aimed at deterrnining

which characteristics of human existence came from nature and which came

from the construction of human laws. While many thinkers were engaged with

this inquiry, there were at least two different schools of thought regarding the

position of men and women in the world. Some scholars such as Voltaire,

accepted a "natural law" theory in which men and women were considered

equals, but there was another group of thinkers (including Jean-Jacques

Rousseau) who believed otherwise. This group based their philosophy on a

mind/body split and assigned specific characteristics based on what they

believed were 'natural' to each group. They deemed that the mind (the rational)

belonged to the masculine; furthermore, he was a fully formed subject.

(the base) was associated with nature and the feminine. this way, the non-

rational "Woman" was excluded from the modern, that is, from the social realm

of politics and ~ul ture .~ Because she was aligned with the body, "Woman" was

not considered a subject like "Man."

7 Terry Barrett, Criticizing Photographs, An Introduction to Understanding Images, Third edition, (Mountain View, Calif.: Mayfield Publishing Company, 2000), 156.

8 While the focus of this thesis is upon wornen as a specific group in society, it should be stated that "Others" were also excluded by patriarchy from culture according to race, class, and sexual orientation, for example.

From this rnind/body split, it was believed that women were naturally

(biologically) inferior to men in al1 respects: physically, emotionally, and

intellectually, and that the only contribution women could make to society was

in the domestic sphere? This justified dividing society into two spheres: the

public realm, where masculine activities of commerce and culture took place, and

the domestic sphere, where women were 'naturally' suited for childrearing and

other responsibilities pertaining exclusively to the home. The division of society

according to sexual difference assisted eighteenth century thinkers in defining

and knowing the world through binary oppositions which formed the basis for

patriarchal social hierarchies. Patriarchy continued to be refined and

strengthened in the nineteenth century due to the expanding fields of science.

Positivist beliefs emphasized that knowledge could be derived from science and

scientific methods which prompted close observation of the natural and human

at was "discovered," of course, further supported patriarchal beliefs

and preserved the social structure. s included gaining scientific 'evidence'

from the fields of medicine and psychiatry that further 'provedf women were

indeed inferior to men. By the latter part of the nineteenth century, society was

divided and strictly organized dong gender/biological lines that privileged the

masculine as the cultural norm.

While first wave feminists called for collective action in the fight for

womenfs equality within the political and legal systems, the next peak of

feminism, emerging in the 1960s and 1970s, targeted the social structure. It was

during this time that the political actions of feminists, gay, and civil rights

9 Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society, (London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 1990), 34.

activists generated a cultural awareness regarding the limitations and ethical

consequences of patriarchal, Western social structures. ey drew attention to

the fact that society was founded upon modernist notions

ese groups criticized modernism and patriarchy for producing "the

suffering and misery of peasants under monarchies, and later, the oppression of

workers under capitalist industrialization, e exclusion of women from the

public sphere, the colonization of other lands by imperialists for economic and

religious reasons, and ultimately the destruction of indigenous peoples."10 One

method of radically questioning modernist tenets became known as

postmodernism.ll It must be noted that postmodernism is neither the sequel to

modernism nor does it render modernism obsolete.12 Rather, postmodernism is

a critique that questions al1 aspects of modernism, including its teleological view

of progress and modernization, and its beliefs about "reality, knowledge, truth

and transcendence."13 It critiques systems and categories that society has been

conditioned to perceive as 'natural', such as capitalism, patriarchy, and traditional

gender roles. It draws attention to the fact that these categories and systems are

10 Barrett, Criticizing Photographs, An Introduction to Understanding Images, 156.

l1 There are many different definitions and understandings for the term 'postmodern' or even 'postmodernism'. As Norman K. Denzin outlines in Images of Postmodern Society: Social Theory and Contemporary Cinema (1991: xi), these terms can simultaneously refer to four interrelated phenomena: historical transformations that have followed from World War II to the present; the multinational forms of late capitalism which are responsible for bringing forth, among other things, new forn-ts of communication and representation into econornic and cultural systems; a movement in the arts (visual arts, architecture, film, music) that counters realist and modernist formulations; and a form of theorizing that is post-positivist and critical.

l2 Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism, (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1986), 217.

l3 Judith Grant, Fundamental Feminism: Contesting the Core Concepts ofFeminist Theory, (New York/London: Routledge, 1993), 129.

not 'natural' but rather, are culturally constructed. While the force and strength

of postmodernism come from its critical analysis, this mode1 also acknowledges

how it, too, is complicit with power and domination since it is, after all, another

dominant discourse.14

For this thesis, postmodernism is useful in an examination of

representation. Around 1970, there was a trend among feminist scholars and

artists who recognized that representation was a valuable arena in which to issue

challenges against dominant ideology. While theoretical writing pre-c. 1970

emphasized political or econornic power bases and their impact upon women

and minorities, there was a later shift in emphasis to an exarnination of

culture and ideology, and in particular, issues of representation. Culture was

understood as a system of signs that produced inferences, understandings, or

meanings for a specific social group; us codes and conventions used in

representations are perceived in the same manner by members of that society.

Ferninism recognized the ideological implications of representations as cultural

products that organize and structure e social world in specific ways that

maintain, perpetuate, and benefit patriarchy. Feminism established that

modernist-based patriarchal definitions of masculine and feminine are not

'natural', but are ideological categories and fictions that use biological (sexual)

differences to structure the world to the advantage of patriarchy. There is

nothing 'naturall about these divisions; "masculine" and "feminine" are social

constructs; thus representations of male and female are fabrications and not

ections of reality.

l4 Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism, (London/New York: Routledge, 1989), 11.

The social constructions of "Woman" were defined, constructed, and

positioned against the modernist notion of the 'natural' subject: a masculine self

who is unique, individual, rational and unified. Postmodern theoretical

models challenged the modernist notion of the subject by indicating subjects

outside of this definition, and foregrounding issues of race, gender, sexual

orientation, and class. It challenged Modernist's understanding of

destabilized the binaries upon which modernism and patriarchal society were

e modernist definition of the subject was placed in crisis.15 With

postmodernism's and feminism's insistence at gender is a fabrication, the

masculine subject--against which society was defined and measured--was

decentered.

Ferninist theories pointed out that patriarchal society defines

masculine, white, and Western, and that this subjectivity is seen as the only fully

formed and coherent, reasoning subject. "Woman," as the binary opposite, is

unauthorized and illegitimate, is passive rather than active, and is an object

rather than subject.16 According to patriarchal and modernist perceptions,

"Woman" is not-man, and since the masculine is recognized by the social

structure as the only allowable and legitimate subject, she possesses no

authority. Further, she is defined by her sexual difference (biology) as passive

and subordinate; this position in the social hierarchy is, in large part,

accomplished through controlling her sexuality. For example, in her relationship

15 Craig Owens, "The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism," Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, and Culture, Scott Bryson et. al., eds., (Berkeley/Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1992)) 166.

l6 Kate Linker, "Representation and Sexuality," Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation, Brian Wallis, ed., (New York, NU: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984)) 393.

with men, she is subservient: she is wife, lover, housekeeper, prostitute, or art

mode1 but never a subject in her own right. is subservience also manifests

itself in how "Woman" is represented in art work. Art history reveals several

centuries in which the female body has been objectified. For example, in

Modernist art the usually nude female form is a forma1 thematic subject similar

to still life paintings and other objects. Representing women as objects was

perpetuated within fine art photography where artist-photographers adopted

the same approaches and conventions that painters used, and thus continued

sexualized representations of the female form. With the female body lacking

subjectivity, "Woman" only refers to her sexualized body, and feminists have

rightly criticized this because such representations empty it of significance and

identity for women. As Sue ornham believes, these representations damage

women's perceptions of themselves, and limit their social roles.l7 Because of this,

it is vital for women to gain control over their own representations by creating

feminist subjectivities as opposed to "feminine" or "female" representations,

which are patriarchal and essentialist.

To accomplish this objective, a theoretical mode1 is required which is able

to both critique dominant systems of patriarchal representation and offer

strategies within the field of representations to create feminist subjectivities.

While postrnodernism criticizes patriarchal representations, what is required

fiom feminism are strategies that allow for feminist subjects and spectators.

owever, only certain kinds of feminisms are able to fulfill the airns of this thesis.

l7 Sue Thornham, "Feminist Media and Film Theory," Contemporary Feminist Theories, Stevi Jackson and Jackie Jones, eds., (Washington Square, NY: New York University Press, 1998), 213.

In her book Modern Feminist Thought (1995), Imelda elehan describes five

general areas in second wave feminism: Liberal, Marxist/Socialist, radical,

lesbian, and Black feminism.18 Despite the different approaches, the cornrnon

goal of these feminists was to challenge dominant discourses, bringing about

equality for women. However, the solutions posited by modernist-based

feminisms (Liberal, Marxist/Socialist, and radical feminism) are not suitable for

the project of this thesis. Their limitations lay in their modernist roots: they

accept the definition of masculine and feminine as defined by sexual difference.

Applying the very mode1 which they find problematic means that their

definitions of female subjectivity cannot be diverse and cannot include identities

relating to race or sexual orientation, for example. le these feminist theories

do investigate representation, the main solution they offer is to simply avoid it.

Clearly, this is not an effective strategy for artists wanting to create feminist

subjectivities, and as elehan believes, postmodern feminist theories are better

able to address issues pertaining to representation.

This need for a postmodern feminism that can address representation is

clearly illustrated in the work of two film theorists, Laura Mulvey and Peter

Gidal, who use modernism. In their discussions of images of women in popular

culture, specifically film, the limitations of modernist-based theories become

apparent. In "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Laura Mulvey argues that

female subjectivity has been socially established and maintained through sexual

l8 Whelehan describes Liberal feminist tradition as being concerned with women's equality in society. A Marxist feminism analyzes the systerns and structures of the patriarchal order and demonstrates how it is dependent upon maintaining class distinctions. The third school of feminist thought that Whelehan describes are the radical feminists who assert th sexism is the root of women's oppression and that men, specifically al1 men, are

difference. Using psychoanalytic theory, she describes how mainstream cinema

produces and reproduces the 'male gaze' which ultimately "control(s) images,

erotic ways of looking, and spe~tacle."~~ "Woman" is denied subjectivity by the

male gaze because it structures her as an object; she is the 'bearer of meaning',

not a 'maker of meaning'. The solution for challenging the male gaze, as posited

by Mulvey, is to problematize or destroy the patriarchal pleasure of looking

through an analysis of the gaze. In practice this means that filmmakers would

not use strategies of representation in order to deny the patriarchal encoding

and use of the feminine erotic for visual pleasure. This would result in a rejection

of representations of women. As for the female spectator, ulvey argues that in

ollywood films, there are only turo ways that female viewers can

watch their counterparts on e screen: by identifying with the male protagonist

(transvestitism) where the female viewer has a 'transvestite' identification with

the male hero, enjoying the action through masculine position, or by identifying

with the female, which is sadomasochistic, since the female is contained and

objectified within the film's narrative. Even in Mulvey's "Afterthoughts ..."

female protagonists and spectators can only "enjoy" brief moments of pleasure

in their oscillation between unstable sexual identities. In terms of mainstream

film, then, there is no active position for female spectators or for women as

subjects.

a similarly radical and extreme approach, British filmmaker Peter Gidal

states that modern representational practices are based upon the political

19 Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation, Brian Wallis, ed., (New York, NU: The New Contemporary Gallery, 1984), 361.

positioning of men and women according to their sexual difference.

reproduces dominant ideology regardless of what the film's narrative involves.

To create films

against sexual identity would bel then, neither dzference ('woman-as-other' against a (male) nom, outside of language and power) nor homogeneity ('woman-as- sarne'), assimilating the male role in patriarchy, i d e n m g with it, such a role denying both women's subjective and objective histories, ideologies, po~ers. '~

Rather than replicate and promote dominant ideology, Gidal advocates a critical

approach by constructing a system in order to create different representational

e suggests that the overdetermined codes and their meanings are too

prevalent; what is needed is a new system that "does not reproduce the

empirical real as real, does not give perception the status of truth, does not

reproduce certain perceptions at a11."'' However, in calling for a critical approach

and a deconstruction of the system, he is not able to address issues around the

desiring subject. Like Mulvey's analysis, the feminist subject and spectators are

still unable to have active roles in the film's narratives.

If Gidal and Mulvey can be used to represent some of the limitations of

modernist theories, we can generalize that modernism can neither imagine

women as active agents of their own desires, nor outline ways to create feminist

subjectivities outside the definitions and representations fabricated by patriarchy.

ere are no positions for women spectators to relate to female subjects in a

cultural text, and this is limiting and unsatisfactory for feminists. Because

20 Peter Gidal, " Against Sexual Representation in Film," Screen, 25:6, November/December 1984: 27-28.

21 Ibid., 28.

modernism falls short in discussions of female subjectivity and representation,

artists need to turn to postmodern feminisms because these theories not only

provide critical analysis but also offer strategies for active intervention in the field

of representation. Specifically, these theories recognize that meanings are

produced within representation, and since they can be made here, they can also

be contested and re-defined. us representation offers a site for the creation of

feminist subjectivities based upon diverse definitions of "Woman."

The necessity to see female identity as diverse was highlighted in the

1970s and 1980s by two groups of ferninists, in particular, lesbians and women of

colour. Each group indicated the same problem: they were fighting for visibility

within a group that purported to be inclusive. From the position of lesbian

ferninists, mainstream feminism excluded women who were not heterosexual. In

fact, 'hetero-reality' was (and still is) the norm that defined (and defines)

mainstream ferninism. In mainstream cinema, this was also true. Mulvey states

that an active/passive heterosexual division of labour controls the narrative

structure: the man's role carries the action in the film's agenda while the woman

supports the narrative by existing as spectacle.

Not only was mainstrearn feminism heterosexist, but it was also

ethnocentric and, as bel1 hooks points out, mainstream feminism is racist because

it is ethnocentric--it only refers to white women. Not only does it directly exclude

wornen of colour, it also contributes to black women's political and historical

invi~ibili@~ and perpetuates the notion that women of colour are "Other" to

22 Within the historical moment of the Abolitionist Movement, the fight for civil rights for blacks really only referred to civil rights for black males. Thiç left black women not only oppressed by patriarchal structures, but also by imperialistic structures.

society in general, as well as to feminism. Both groups succeeded in making

visible the specific paradigrn that mainstream feminism used to define "Woman"

which only included the experiences of white, middle-class, hetereosexual

women. Wanting to name a feminism for thernselves, lesbian and black feminists

called for a feminism that expanded theory, discussion, and issues outside the

circle of its white, heterosexual, middle-class founders. As hooks suggests,

agency for al1 women would emerge from an 'inclusionist' feminism, one that

contained various approaches including multiracial, multicultural, and

multisexual components. Women are not a homogeneous group so distinctions

of nationality, ethnicity, education, language, family, class, employment,

ability/disability, and sexuality are important and need to be considered.

What emerged from eir cal1 were postmodern feminist theories w

achieved two key results. First, they pointed to a blind spot in mainstream

feminism: there are a number of other oppressive systems at work in society

besides patriarchy. What was needed was an understanding of the complexity

and diversity of power since it created and sustains divisions in society along key

axes including gender, race, and class. Second, they demanded recognition that

the biological and imaginary body is socially and culturally produced. New

meanings for "Woman" were not to be discovered, but rather, prod~ced.'~

is where the arena of representation becomes crucial for feminism because it is

here that patriarchal representations can be dismantled and re-worked, allowing

feminists to re-imagine, re-write, re-frame, and re-present "Woman." In this way

23 Rosemary Betterton, "Identities, Mernories, Desires: The Body in History," An Intimate Distance: Women, Artists and the Body, (London & New York: Routledge, 1996), 2.

postmodernism provides a critique of representational practices without

avoiding strategies of representation altogether, and postrnodern feminisrns

offer specific ways that feminist subjectivities can be produced.

efore re-writing patriarchal definitions and representations of "Woman,"

it is vital that feminism dispense with the modernist notion of a subject located in

history and "replace unitary notions of women and gender identity with plural,

complexly structured conceptions of social identity, treating gender as one

relevant strand among others, attending to class, race, e t h n i ~ i t ~ . " ~ ~ As lesbian

ferninists and feminists of colour have indicated, "Woman" should not be

described as a unitary subject since there are too many definitions of what that

could mean. Furthermore, multiple and ever-changing subjectivities provide

women with agency. If female subjectivity is no longer viewed in unitary terms,

is it difficult for patriarchy to control it; with this lack of control over "Wornan," a

female subject with agency is possible.

Defining the female subject as stable and unitary, or seeking stable sexual

identities as Mulvey suggests, leans dangerously close to essentializing female

subjectivities. A postmodern position on subjectivity advocates that individuals

have multiple, continuously-changing subjectivities which Juliet Steyn refers to as

'mobile subjectivities'. Mobile subjectivities are imaginary constructs whose form

is forever shifting in response to the places they are called to occupy within a

social, political, or textual formation. According to Steyn, subjectivities move and

shift, appear and disappear, make and re-invent themselves as they traverse

24 Nancy Fraser and Linda J. Nicholson, "Social Criticism Without Philosophy: An Encounter Between Feminism and Postmodemism," Feminism~ostmodernism, Linda Nicholson, ed., (New York, NY: Routledge, 1990), 35.

across various axes of discourse. These discourses, or routes, include language,

class, gender, farnily, race, physical and psychological desires, and m e m ~ r y . ~ ~ In

other words, subjectivity is always being created and re-created in relation to

these axes, or 'locations', as various situations, interactions, experiences,

reactions, and relationships influence and inform the construction of sel

Thus no one particular subjectivity exists for any person (male or femal

subjectivities are mobile, they are partial and in transition, moved by the various

forms of discourse they encounter. Wowever, this is not to be confused with the

notion that subjectivities are only in process as they move from one specific

subjectivity to another solid location. Rather, from a postmodern feminist

perspective, there are no solid places or structures upon which they can settle or

stop: there is only a momentary politics of time and place.

The argument made by modernist discourses against provisional and

mobile subjectivities is that by rejecting a unitary subject and replacing it with a

subject defined by a plurality of 'Truths' one advocates a multi-layered,

splintered self. Modernists maintain that outside of the theoretically-imagined

self, people (excluding the psychotic) see themselves as single and complete

beings rather than an endless set of possible selves. While there is a difference

between theory and reality, on a theoretical level, it is essentialist to advocate a

core self. Feminism needs to reject essentialism and accept mobile subjectivities

because it provides diversity for the female subject.

Postmodernism is extremely useful, especially when investigating

representation. It can illustrate how representations are textual constructions of

25 Irving Sandler, "Postmodemist Art Theory," Art of the Postrnodern Era;frorn the Late 1960s to the Early 1990s, First edition, (New York, NY: IconEditions, 1996), 359.

sexual objects in the social realm that are implemented through a political

economy of signs and difference which turn "Woman" (or anything else) into a

commodity. While the formation of these identities and representations is one

step towards creating feminist subjectivities, it is the agency of these

subjectivities that challenges patriarchal definitions of women. e main form of

agency comes from the feminist-postmodernist theoretical mode1 which presents

opportunities for women artists to resist "Woman" as solely defined by

dominant discourse. Agency for women emerges from feminism and

postmodernism and their emphasis upon the subject as a producer of culture as

well as its most complicated t e ~ t . ' ~ Through the re-imagining and re-writing of

the female body and the circulation of these representations, artists are able to

challenge patriarchy as the controller of female subjectivity. Before subverting

and re-writing patriarchal notions of "Woman," feminists must reject the

historical facticity of identity as already establishedZ7 (as an a priori fact) because

this greatly restricts theorizing; in fact, the only avenues for theorizing are then

in relation to what has been defined by patriarchy. Challenges to dominant

discourse would only take the form of indicating the problems of the structure

without presenting methods for change. answer, according to Judith Butler

and Joan Scott in Ferninists Theorize the Political (1992), is in the way feminists

choose to define "Woman." If they see her as a field of differences that cannot be

pinned down, this eludes definition by modernist discourse; in

26 Kathleen Ashley, "Introduction," Autobiography b Postmodernism, Kathleen Ashley, Leigh Gilmore, and Gerald Peters, eds., (Boston, MS: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 3.

27 Beverley Skeggs, ed., "Introduction," Ferninist Cultural Theory: Processes and Production, (Manchester/New York: Manchester University Press, 1995), 13.

"Womanrf becomes a site of openness and re-signification. A specific site where

new meanings for "Woman" can be created is the field of representation because

it is here that artists can contest patriarchal definitions and produce feminist

subjectivities.

It is important to bear in mind that "representation" does not refer to

material reality. While gender differences are based in the material world, the

social construction of gender is not; rather, it is produced by dominant ideology

which means that there can be no one definition of "Woman." Therefore,

ferninists should not concentrate on trying to determine one definition for

"Woman," or creating representations of 'real' women, or trying to 'accurately'

represent womenfs experiences. Instead, analysis should focus upon the

production of meaning in order to generate feminist epistemologies.

in producing feminist subjectivities, one must not ignore the existing patriarchal

definitions; what is required is a combination of the two. Feminists need to see

how rneanings for "Woman" have been produced by patriarchy because this

knowledge better enables them to intervene in the field of representation and

subvert patriarchal notions of ''Woman." Since representation is an effective site

of challenge to patriarchal definitions and portrayals of "Woman," feminists can

use and re-work the same codes and conventions to create their own

subjectivities. One of the most effective mediums for accomplis

photography, specifically tableau photography where women can rework

representational codes to suit their needs. This is the focus of the next chapter.

ng feminist subjectivities

For Roland Barthes, representation refers to something coded in

rhetorical, textual, or pictorial terms, which is quite distinct from its social

existence. For example, patriarchal representations of "Woman" are based on

her biological differences from men, so her depictions as an objectified body (as

they appear in film and photography, for example) emphasize her sexuality

through her body posture, costume, dialogue, and relationship to the male

protagonist. She is situated as an objectified body for the male gaze. As Griselda

Pollock states, "Woman" is a signifier in ideological discourses and these are

"products of an active process of selecting and presenting, of structuring and

shaping, of making things me~n."~' Thus "Woman" is a text consisting of various

combinations of codes and conventions that are 1 ed to signifying systems.

ecause these codes seem to have always been in circulation, their meanings

appear 'natural'. owever, the meanings given to these codes have nothing to

do with any 'essential' or 'intrinsic' definitions; rather, they have been assigned

specific understandings by ideology for the purpose of conditioning our

existence and directing Our comprehension of the social world.

To investigate how meaning is produced and perpetuated through

representations, feminists can conduct a semiotic analysis of representations of

"Woman" to determine what the message is, and how they are created and used

to suit the needs and desires of patriarchy. Within this analysis one must be

aware of how ideology works so as to connect a serniotic investigation with a

Sue Thomham, "Ferninist Media and Film Theory," Contemporary Feminist Theories, 215.

specific examination. This enables the analysis to proceed beyond a simple

critique of iconography and into a more pro-active position whereby the authority

of patriarchal representations is threatened by revealing the invisible workings

of ideology. It is not easy to distinguish the presence of ideology in our society

partly because, as Louis Althusser states, the social structure presents its beliefs

as 'universal' or 'natural' to that society so as to efface the signs of its own

operation. By naturalizing the cultural, dominant ideology reproduces and

reinforces itself by promoting the values and specific interests of the dominant

group, and defending the status quo. Codes of representation, such as those

used in photography, are effective in this naturalization because photographs

appear to repect 'reality' when they reproduce ideology and, in turn, produce

ideology.

Photography is advantageous to the patriarchal structure because of the

way it is interpreted by society. A seemingly 'transparent' medium that appears

to have 'zero degree' of expressi0n,2~ photographs are not interpreted by

viewers in the same way as oil paintings, for example, which are described

and adrnired for their forma1 qualities such as the arrangement and relationships

of line, shape, and colour. Rather, photography is noted for its illusionary

'transparency': it is a medium through which we receive information and artistic

idea~.~ ' Generally when viewers see a photograph, especially photojournalist

images, they usually do not have the sense that someone generated the image,

29 Jean-Claude Lemagny, A History of Photography, Social and Cultural Perspectives, Jean-Claude Lemagny and André Rouillé, eds., and tram. by Janet Lloyd, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 212.

Joel Eisinger, "Modernism and Postmodernism," Trace and Transformation: Arnerican Criticism of Photography in the Modernist Period. Firçt edition. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), 246.

even though what they see in the photograph is what they believe the

photographer saw the moment he or she tripped the shutter. Rather, they

perceive that the photograph was somehow self-generated. e presence of the

photographer at the scene appears to function more as a witness to whatever

was captured on film, and this seems to guarantee that what was photographed

was 'true' or 'real'. To illustrate this notion of the photograph's illusionary

'transparencyf, one only has to consider viewers' responses to a photograph:

usually they do not look at an image and search for clues on how it was

constructed, nor do they evaluate the photograph to determine which systems

of representation it is referencing. e basic procedure for the average viewer

when looking at a photograph is to read and interpret the semiotic codes with

the intention of discerning a message, and to believe (at some level) that at one

ar point in time, there was a subject, a camera, and a photographer, and

what the photographer saw through the viewfinder and photographed truly

existed in time and space. e illusion of transparency is this: even though a

photograph seems unmediated, it is, in fact, highly mediated. Photographers

frame the world in a certain way through their viewfinders and organize

elements to create a specific meaning that directs the viewer's interpretation.

Photography plays a significant role within dominant discourse and in

relation to representation. As Jean Baudrillard asserts, Our society knows itself

through the reflections that flow from the camera's eye?' Photographs codify

and transmit a culture's myths and values. As Barbara DeGenevieve maintains,

31 as paraphrased by Norman K. Denzin, Images of Postmodern Society: Social Theory and Contemporary Cinenza, (London/Newbury Park/New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 1991), vii.

photographic images carry ideological messages which cumulatively shape the culture's ideas, values, and attitudes. They are the bearers of cultural mythologies. If we see enough pictures of a certain type (women being brutalized by men, minorities as ghetto residents) we conclude that such imagery is valuable to the

Images that are claimed as 'real' by what is presented in films and in

photographs have become stand-ins for actual, lived e~periences.~~ Feminists

recognize this as being detrimental to women because society only knows

"Woman" through patriarchal definitions manifested as stereotypes and cultural

myths. To interrupt and challenge the invisibility of ideology, women artists can

work from within systems of meaning, especially those used in photographic

representations. Photography can be a valuable tool in subverting patriarchal

constructions because ideology depends upon it to create and circulate myths of

"Woman." 'I'hrough photography, artists are able to re-work and re-

contextualize patriarchal codes and conventions in order to produce

notions of feminist subjectivity. Further, because society is bombarded daily by

photographic images, these subversive images can create a tension between

patriarchal constructions of "Woman" and feminist representations.

the opportunity for the denaturalizing of ideology by pointing out the

contradictions between the two kinds of images. When the viewer perceives the

feminist texts as not adhering to the 'usual', that is, to patriarchal representations

of "Woman," he/she is prompted to compare traditional notions of "Woman"

32 Barbara DeGenevieve, "Guest Editorial on Teaching Theory," Exposure, 26, no. 2/3, 1988: 10.

33 Norman K. Denzin, Images of Postmodern Society: Social Theoy and Contemporary Cinema, (London/Newbury Park/New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 1991), x.

with the feminist representation. This produces the recognition that something

other than dominant ideology is at work.

m i l e there are many different approaches to photography, the tableau

approach provides women artists with a stage upon which to create and

construct their own subjectivities. To define tableau, we have to acknowledge its

original source: theatre. In theatrical terms, tableau vivant refers to a staged scene

in which the actors neither speak nor m ~ v e . ~ ~ Using either a small space (the size

of a shoe box), or a large space (an entire room, for example), an artist creates a

theatre of sorts in which he or she carefully arranges and organizes people

and/or objects in order to express a particular message or artistic intention. After

frarning the scenes, the artist photographically records an action, event, or some

interaction between the elements and people; their artistic message can be drawn

from any number of sources including persona1 experience, fantasy, eroticism,

theatre, film, farce, language, philosophy, history, memory, and so forth.

ableaux photographers, then, use a directorial mode in order to create a silent

and staged theatrical moment which is subsequently captured on film.35

photographs are not transcriptions of reality; rather, they are constructions of

the artist's imaginati~n.~"~ replacing the camera's (presumed) objectivity with

the artist/photographer's subjective realities, the artist makes the audience fully

aware that the photograph is a creative product meant to reveal or express

34 Elizabeth Cole, "Fantasy Environments: The Tableau Photography of Sandy Skoglund," Arts Getty website (January 1992); p. 23; site accessed 22 January 2000; site address: www.artsednet.getty.edu/ArtsEdNet/Resources/Skoglund/cole.h&l

35 Tableau photography is not a recent phenornena but rather, it has been used since the early years of photography.

36 Elaine K. Dines, Anxious Interiors, An Exhibition of Tableau Photography and Sculpture, (Laguna Beach, CA: Laguna Beach Museum of Art, 1984), 17.

persona1 intentions, information, or a political stance.37 this way, the artist

becomes the producer/creator of feminist subjectivities.

Also important is the manner in which tableau photography draws

attention to the artifice of the photograph, that is, to the photograph-as-

s can be achieved in various ways including the selection of

objects and people to photograph, their arrangement, technical considerations

such as the type of camera and film used, the lighting of the tableau, the framing

of the scene, and so forth. As Randy Bradley suggests in The Staged Photograph

(1989), evidence of the artist's manipulation can be seen in three general ways:

the details within the photographic frame that indicate the photograph is a

production; the treatment of time and space; and the creation of visual

ambiguity.

In Brenda Francis Pelkey's "dreams of life and death," the most

pronounced element that distinguishes her photographs-as-productions is the

manner in which the scenes and locations are illuminated. Except forfreld and

water, which were taken during the day and under natural light, Pelkey

photographed the other sites at night using bright movie spot lights.

these lights, and the way she photographed the site to include the spotlight

effect, draw the viewerfs attention to Pelkey's role in the construction of the

photograph. While photographic lights are usually used to illuminate the scene

evenly so as to create a realistic or natural-looking site, Pelkey does the opposite.

e centers of her photographs are lit the brightest but instead of framing these

areas to photograph and excluding the unlit and poorly lighted areas, she has

" Shelley Sopher, "Tableaux: Narratives and Constructed Realities," BIackfEash, vol. 5/no. 3, Fa11 1987: 19.

included both in the frame. This creates the impression that the audience is

standing at a distance from the scene and observing the stage from the

viewpoint of the photographer. Pelkey's photographs thus have the appearance

of theatrical stages or movie sets rather than snapshots taken from 'reality'.

choice of equipment, such as the film type, camera, and photographic paper, also

contribute to the theatricality of her imagery. e use of colour transparency

film in her large format camera, and the printing of her work on ilfochome

paper produce photographs that are fine-grained and have a saturated, colour-

rich, metallic tone when compared to standard colour film and photographic

paper. The rich metallic colours characteristic of ilfochrome create a surrealism or

at least highlight the artificiality of the photographed moment.

photographs in this series are more akin to theatre and movies than to reality.

e second way Pelkey's manipulation is evident in the tableau

photographs is through her treatment of space and time, which also gives the

perception of a movie or theatrical production. One of the most obvious

examples of her manipulation of space and time is the assembling of the

individual photographic panels into diptychs and triptychs. When the viewer

stands in front of the images, his/her field of vision is extended from 'normal'

human vision to the 'panoramic' vision of a movie screen, or of the whole stage

in a theatrical production. The combination of many photographic panels to

form one panoramic image destroys the notion of the sin ar unmanipulated

photographic moment, that is, it works against the documentary photograph as

a single instant that provides objective information. The photograph-as-

construction is also made evident in the separate but connected photographic

moments / scenes which do not exactly match. Sometimes these shifts are

obvious while at other times they are subtle. There are shifts in perspective,

colour balance, and amount of light falling on the subject. In Pelkey's treatrnent

of time, once again the spotlights play an important role. As already mentioned,

the spotlight effect produces an intriguing aesthetic: in the center of the image,

the subject matter is well lit, but as the eye moves towards the edges of the

photograph, it progressively becomes darker (in some photographs) until it is

completely black. A way to describe this aesthetic is to compare it to looking

through binoculars: e image is presented in a circular format with the edges

slightly blurred. On a semiotic level the way that the spotlight frames the image

is a convention used in film to signal that a past time or event is being recalled:

what is clearly remembered is highlighted while the rest of the memory sits

within the darkness of the unconscious.

The third characteristic of tableau photography, according to Bradley, is

the use of ambiguities within the image which makes evident the artist's hand in

the construction of the image. While Pelkey's tableau images do not create

obvious ambiguities such as dramatic shifts in scale or uncertainty as to what is

represented, they do create a sense of vagueness in relation to time. Although

her sites and objects look as if they belong to our present moment, the aesthetic,

which implies a past time, seems to suggest otherwise. Until the viewer reads the

accompanying text panels at each diptych or triptych that informs them that the

art work is indeed based on e artist's memories from childhood and

adulthood, it is difficult to discern a specific time context or frame.

approach to illuminating the locations produces a sense that the photograph is

less a (traditional) photographic document and more like a film mise-en-scène.38

is set, however, is void of actors and action. rough film techniques such as

having the night scenes emerge from the darkness, Pelkey creates a sense of

isolation and danger which produces suspense and anticipation in the viewers.

Also generating a sense of apprehension is the Zack of action on the tableau set,

which suggests that something is about to occur. Or, perhaps something

disturbing may already be happening just outside of the frame in the darkness,

and although the audience cannot see it yet, Our vision (through the panning of

the rnovie camera) will be drawn to the event or action, revealing what is

currently hidden.

While tableaux images draw attention to the constructedness of the photo,

what is also significant in this approach is the final photographic form. When

photography translates the actual tableaux elements into the pictorial, the

objects, relationships, and actions within the photographic frarne are

transformed into the representational (codes and conventions). Thus the

photograph becomes a cultural text in which objects and people are interpreted

differently than if they were viewed in the material realm, such as in gallery

installations. The translation of the tableaux installation/stage from its three-

dimensional form into the two-dimensional photograph creates a new

understanding of the elements and relationships displayed within the image. It is

the transformation from the actual tableau elements into the pictorial that is key

for activist artists because when artists understand the various ways in which a

38 It should be noted the ease with which Pelkey's series can be discussed in film tenns and techniques. It attests to the fact that her photographs are productions of her imagination rather than representing 'objective' snapshots of reality.

photographed object, relationship, or action can be interpreted by viewers, they

can arrange the elements to create new understandings. This is why some

tableaux photographers who create elaborate and complex stages disallow the

viewing of the actual set?' For them, the art is not in the set design and

choreography, but rather, the materials are important only to serve their

purpose.

While tableaux photographs indicate the constructedness of the image by

providing evidence that it is a deliberate production, Pelkey's work takes this a

step further. She adds a textual component to her series so that both the tableaux

photographs and the autobiographical information presented in

work together to construct her subjectivities. The subjectivities she presents in

written narratives are located on text panels either next to or underneath her

assembled images (illustration 1). Autobiography provides effective techniques

for creating female speaking subjects as well as a site for cultural critique and

social change."' 1 will only discuss a select few elements from the large field of

autobiography, specifically, the advantages of using memory as the basis for

creating one's subjectivities, and how language, specifically the use of persona1

narratives assists in creating subjectivity. When considering autobiography as a

39 There are occasions when the tableau photographer has made available to the general public the installation or set from which they have photographed. While this is the exception rather than the nom, an exhibition at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis features the work of six tableaux artists, displaying both the sculpture and/or installations as well as the photographs produced from their "sets." See the exhibition catalogue entitled Cross References: Sculpture into Photography, published by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1987.

40 Betty Bergland, "Postmodernism and the Autobiographical Subject: Reconstructing the 'Other,"' Autobiography & Postmodernism, Kathleen Ashley, Leigh Gilmore, and Gerald Peters, eds., (Boston, Mass: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 162.

strategy for creating a female speaking subject, it is important to remember that

Western autobiographical traditions have reproduced its dominant ideology; the

speaking subject has traditionally been restricted to the white, Western,

bourgeois male who has been granted the authority to define and speak about

the world. "Man" speaks for "Others" who are viewed by the social structure as

voiceless non-subjects.

Women artists can speak and represent themselves by articulating their

own histories and experiences through persona1 narratives. This decenters the

narrator (and subject) of traditional autobiography and replaces it with a

subjectivity that is never fully autonomous, but rather, continually shaped by

various discourses and social forces, including gender which works against the

universalization of the subject as male. Thus the illusionary autonomous

masculine subject is no longer the only subject in the social world; the

autobiographical tradition is forced to include diverse understandings and

definitions of it. A feminist definition of a social subject, then, is one who is

"simultaneously embodied, gendered, social, and unique ... [and] capable of

telling stories and of conceiving and experiencing itself in these ~ a ~ s . " ~ '

For Rosemary Betterton, the autobiographical is an important way for

women to explore the social and psychic production of feminine iden t i ez A key

source of material for ferninist autobiographical art work is memory, which, as

bel1 hooks believes, can be used in a constructive way especially when experience

41 Jane Flax, Thinking Fragments; Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary West, (Berkeley/Los Angeles/Oxford: University of California Press, 1990), 231.

42 Rosemary Betterton, "Identities, Mernories, Desires: The Body in History," 173.

is to be t h e ~ r i z e d . ~ ~ Using memory in art work is strategic in a number of ways.

If we examine the characteristics of memory and consider them in relation to the

definition of subjectivity, recollections are akin to representations: both are

fragmentary, never fully formed, and are shifting entities. They are re-

remembered and re-worked, just like representations, and as more time and

experience fills the space between the actual event and the moment of recall,

memories become less accurate and more difficult to remember. Also, they are

re-created (whether consciously or not) to fil1 in e gaps of forgetfulness or to

change the event to fulfill a comfort level. As Gayle Greene argues, memory is

far from being a trustworthy transcriber of 'reality' because it is a shaper and a

shape shifter that takes liberties with the p a ~ t . ~ ~ In other words, the past (as it is

remembered) is not fixed but rather, fluid. This inability to pin down memory is

a way for women to fabricate their experiences and themselves. Since

autobiography is constructed in relation to a variety of different discourses and

not to reality, artists are able to wield control over information about themselves

which in turn allows them to manage their subjectivities and representations.

e pairing of written text that is based on memory with a photographic

image is one of the most straightforward and fundamental methods in which

artists can 'speak' through their art work. Because tableau photography sets up

the expectation that the photographic medium is being used as a creative one, the

viewer does not anticipate 'Truth' but instead, expects that the image has been

43 see bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, (Boston, MA: South End Press, c. 1989), 109 ff.

44 Gayle Greene, "Feminist Fiction and the Uses of Memory," Signs, Winter 1991: 293.

37

fabricated to relay the artist's construction of 'reality', to express a specific

intention, or project desires or fantasies. The text fulfills this expectation that the

'facts' presented are subjective information, such as the artist's personal

viewpoints, or political statements. In conjunction with the tableaux stages,

Pelkey's series "drearns of life and death" provides the audience with firsthand

accounts of her persona1 experiences, specifically, recollections of unsettling and

disturbing memories from her childhood and adulthood. She reveals seven

fragments of memories from her life, which include: the death of an 'uncle' who

repulsed her as a child (tree); mistaking drowning peoples' shouts as seagulls'

cries (water); recalling someone's death by electrocution from a power pole (pole);

meeting a man whose daughter was dying ('field); knowing a quirky man who

committed suicide (telephone booth); the confession of a lover that he was married

(graveyard); and being oblivious to domestic abuse that was happening to her

neighbour (yard). Pelkey's first person narrative articulates subjectivities that are

neither described nor advocated by patriarchy, and this highlights the presence

of something unauthorized by ideology, in this case, the presence of a female

subject. Thus the narrative f q m i is a political form: language is a site of struggle

over content and meaning in art. Artists can use persona1 narratives based on

rnemories to formulate and express their subjectivities.

According to postmodernism, language cannot represent the whole or

complete subject. What is possible, however, is to use the narrative form and

manipulate language to provide glimpses of one's subjectivities. These glimpses

are connected to the textual form Pelkey employs to tell her stories: she uses

fragmentary language like phrases and snippets of thoughts which, when strung

together, seem disjointed. e narrative does not presume to express a

complete, coherent, and unchanging subject; rather, it highlights the randornness

of recollections and how memory, like subject formation, is not an orderly, linear

process. For an example of this fragmentary narrative and how it presents a

subject-in-progress, it is useful to turn to the text accompanying the diptych

graveyard (illustration 2):

in a graveyard he had knelt before me and confessed that he was married.

His wife told me that they stiil had sex.

He had shown me how to witch for water.

It was a long t h e before my skin grew back.

While the central concept is the confession of her lover, Pelkey's peripheral

remembrances associated with this incident, such as witching for water and

having a conversation with her lover's wife, provide the spectator with enough

fragmentary information to create an impression of the people involved and what

possibly took place. Within the space of four brief sentences, the reader has a

general but extremely limited understanding of Pelkey's experience. Using

memory as a source for creating feminist subjectivities is effective as a feminist

strategy because it shows the subject-in-process, and therefore denies a unitary

understanding of "Woman."

It is interesting to note the ways in which the various fragments of

memory are ordered in the above passage. It is very similar to the way that

memory itself works: a recollection is brought to consciousness which triggers

other memories and feelings surrounding that recollection. What emerges is a

central idea encircled by a loose collection of other related memories. A

39

similarity can be drawn between the form of the persona1 narrative (based on

memory) and the formation of subjectivity: Pelkey's fragmentary recollections

are seemingly random and nonlinear but still connected, and this is similar to the

formation of subjectivity as a momentary politics of time and location, constantly

in flux, responding to various discourses it encounters. The subject is in-progress.

emory and subjectivity move and shift, making the production of subjectivity

unfinished business and this avoids the fallacy of modern autobiographical

presumptions about 'knowing' the person through persona1 narrative.

e spectator/reader must also be aware that when memory is used as

the source of an art work, what the artist reveals may or may not be completely

accurate or even truthful. Because of the nature of memory, which allows the

subject--whether he or she is conscious of it or not--to alter, add to, or even

suppress and 'forget' certain instances in their life, memories become a

combination of fact and fiction. Pelkey's memories seem to be true because they

use the autobiographical form--a form that carries the assumption that persona1

texts present accurate information. What may not be considered by the viewer is

the potential for Pelkey's memories to be partly true and partly fictional, since

the past, as it is remembered, is never fixed or stable. As Gayle Greene states,

"memory revises, reorders, refigures, resignifies; it includes or omits,

embellishes or represses, decorates or drops, according to imperatives of its

~ w n . " * ~ Additionally, Pelkey may have knowingly and willfully altered what she

remembered. While it is not necessary to the audience's interpretations and

understanding of the work that they know what is 'truthful', close to the 'truth',

45 Ibid., 293.

or re-worked, the fact that the audience cannot discern between what is real and

what is fictionalized means that Pelkey further controls her representation and

subjectivities. She simply cannot be pinned down.

ile the female speaker can distinguish herself as a subject using

memories and the narrative form, there are tensions between language itself and

the female speaking subject. According to Bergland, when the female subject

adopts the autobiographical form, she uses the language which has been

naturalized as white, Western, and male. Because "Woman" is positioned as

patriarchy's "Other," she would have to articulate her subjecthood through the

oppressor's language--the language which has systematically excluded

"Woman" from culture. The argument is that an "Other" must then construct

the autobiographical self through the language of the oppressor, or remain

However, because women are oppressed does not automatically mean

that they are completely without language or ~oice!~ Rather than examining this

tension from the viewpoint of how patriarchal language can be used to articulate

the "Other's" autobiography, a more fruitful approach for ferninists is to

acknowledge that women are positioned in multiple and contradictory

discourses and the effects of this multiplicity shapes them. 48

46 Bergland, "Postmodernism and the Autobiographical Subject: Reconstructing the 'Other,"' 132.

47 E. Deidre Pribram, "Introduction," A Companion to Film Theory, Toby Miller and Robert Stam, eds., (Oxford, UK/Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 1999), 4.

48 Another aspect of language that creates a female speaking subject is the use of pronoms. As indicated by the linguist Emile Benveniste, we constitute ourselves as subjects through language. The use of personal pronom (1, me, my) structures and organizes the spatial and temporal relationships around a subject which allow for the shaping of a hurnan subjectivity. Thus it could be argued that pronoms locate Pelkey's text both in time (specifically, the past: her childhood and adulthood) and place (not here in the gallery) which distinguishes the text frorn the present (as the audience reads

Tableau photography, in conjunction with a textual component comprised

of personal narratives (based on memories), allows Pelkey to fabricate and

present highly-controlled glimpses of her subjectivities.

construction and presentation of these subjectivities is only the first part of the

process of creating feminist subjectivities. Equally important is the reception and

interpretation of these cultural texts by the spectator. This second part is crucial

because it is the spectator who can interpret the subjectivity presented, create

oppositional readings that counter patriarchal notions of "Woman," and become

feminist spectators regardless of their gender.

it) and the place ( the gallery). Furthermore, as Frederick Garber argues in "The Syntaxes of Barbara Kruger," (1995: 219) in Benvenistian terms, "1" posits the speaker as a subject, and where there is an "1," there is always a "you," that is, an audience. Neither "1" nor "you" can exist without each other, thus these relations never fail. The I/you paired terms create subjectivity by assigning the speaker/artist the status of subject.

ter 3: Producing feminist ectatorship positions

in "dreams of Eife a

In theories of film spectatorship, what constitutes the spectator runs a

wide gamut of understandings and definitions. In early feminist film scholarship

(c. 1970s), much acadernic writing on spectatorship was based on psychomalytic

models. Feminists turned to psychoanalysis because they wanted to move away

from biologically essentialist models that enforced divisions in society according

to gender. They saw the potential in unconscious processes for explaining sexual

differences. Generally speaking, psychoanalytic models are advantageous to

feminism because they recognize that gender is a primary cause of subject

formation and social division. owever, it has drawbacks, most notably, the

impossibility of the existence offemle subjects and for active feminist

spectatorship positions. This is because psychoanalysis does not acknowledge the

operation of other variables in subject formation such as race and class, or

differences among subjects. Furthermore, these models deny different

spectatorship positions because they assume that each member of the audience

has the same viewing experience. This is based on the hypothesis that there is a

development pattern for language and subject identity t cuts across time and

is present in al1 cultural groups.49 Because psychoanalysis envisions the process

of subject and spectatorship formation in this way, including the limited positions

that female spectators c m occupy, this model is inadequate for this thesis. What

is required, instead, is a theoretical model that rejects the notion that the only

49 Ibid., 2.

legitimate subject is male, and that subject positions are defined and fixed by

ideology.

A more appropriate theory is one whose foundation is predicated upon

masculine and feminine as subject positions and not biological gi~ens.~' While this

esis has used much film theory in discussions of representation and tableau

photography, this is not the strongest area for locating spectatorship models

because, as discussed earlier and in reference to the writing of Laura

Peter Gidal, the heavy reliance on psychoanalysis means that the spectator is

defined as a coherent, fixed subject (who is male and heterosexual), and the

messages he receives are fairly stable. ere is no diversity among these

subjects, nor room for interpreting textual messages. A spectatorship model

from Cultural Studies is more suitable for this thesis because of the recognition

of diversity among spectators who are seen as historically and socially

constituted. Subjects are never just a product of ideology, nor are they

completely formulated through their own history and circumstances. Rather,

they are produced by both5' and integrate the effects of representation and

other signifying practices while acknowledging that they are agents of socio-

cultural constructs and institutions.

Within a Cultural Studies model, e spectator is defined as a historically

and socially constituted subject who exists outside the theoretical (or, assumed)

audience of psychoanalysis. This understanding of viewers is significant and

50 Abigail Solomon-Godeau, "Reconsidering Erotic Photography: Notes for a Project of Historical Salvage," Photography ut the Dock, Essays on Photographie History, institutions, and Practices, (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 220.

51 E. Deidre Pribram, "Spectatorship and Subjectivity," A Companion to Film Theory, Toby Miller and Robert Stam, eds., (Oxford, UK/Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 1999), 159.

valuable for feminism because these spectators, male and female, are able to

recognize and resist dominant encodings by generating oppositional r ead ing~ .~~

In other words, spectators participate in the construction of the text's meaning(s)

instead of having meanings imposed upon them. This is important because of

the spectator's potential response(s): he or she may contradict, reject, or

erwise problematize how the 'ideal' spectator is meant to respond to a t e ~ t . ~ ~

A connection, or intersubjectivity between themselves and the artist is formed

when the viewer identifies with the artist as a subject and not an object.

oppositional readings create feminist spectatorship positions.

To foster this intersubjectivity so as to encourage and prompt feminist

spectatorship, artists can manage their texts to position their viewers. As

discussed in Chapter Two, tableau photography can be used to control the

formation and presentation of subjectivities: women can photograph themselves

performing a self before the camera; they can arrange a stage

comprised of objects and/or people where the implied relations

notions of the artist's subjectivities; they can use narrative texts based on

mernories in conjunction with their photographs. Regardless of the techniques

that artists use, they must consider how their work could be interpreted by their

audience. For example, with tableaux images, artists must anticipate whether

codes and conventions used in their images will be easily understandable in the

final photograph and plan their set construction and photo shoot accordingly. If

they choose to create a text that is both accessible and appealing to the viewer

52 Ibid., 160.

5"udith Mayne, "Paradoxes of Spectatorship," Viewing Positions, Ways of Seeing Film, Linda Williams, ed., (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 157.

(some artists deliberately create ambiguous texts), the artist can set up the text to

engage the spectator on a persona1 level.

Pelkey's art work creates feminist spectatorship positions for male or

female viewers in three key ways: by including recognizable imagery in the

photographs; by implying her presence without having an image of her body;

and by manipulating language to appeal to the viewer's imagination.

easily recognizable subject matter in her diptychs and triptychs draws the viewer

into the art work through the ease with which the audience can "read" the

photographs of ordinary, even banal, sites and locations. This creates a sense of

familiarity and comfort in the viewer. In graveyard (illustration 2), for exarnple,

the audience sees a triptych portraying a row of graves; in water (illustration 3),

the spectator is presented wi three separate images of waves that are either

breaking upon or receding from the shoreline; the triptychfield (illustration 4)

depicts a field enclosed by a wood and barbed wire fence which runs alongside a

country dirt road. e subject matter is recognizable and understandable, which

is important when trying to establish intersubjective relationships: when

spectators are faced with this type of art in a gallery context, they usually

approach it with confidence that they can interpret the imagery.

draws them further into the art work.

addition to recognizable imagery, Pelkey uses photographic and film-

making techniques to create a specific mood or atmosphere through lighting.

e prevalent mood in her series is one of suspense, danger, or anticipation of

some action. For instance, in yard (illustration 5), the viewer's eye is drawn from

the outer edges of the night towards the spotlight which illuminates a hard-

packed dirt road leading to a white house at is hidden behind trees. Beside the

house (on the viewer's left) is a ve cle, and on the right side of the house there

are more white buildings, or perhaps it is the continuation of the house.

framing of the photograph, the details (including what is not seen), as well as the

lighting (both the actual spotlight and the darkness around the edges of the

beam), produce a variety of expectations and emotions such as fear, mystery,

and suspense, as well as anticipation of an event that is about to happen.

Additionally, these mise-en-scènes prompt the spectator to ask questions about

the image before him/her: is the source of light a flashlight or the headlights of

an approaching vehicle? 1s the person bearing the light coming to this house

intent on harming those inside or damaging their property? 1s the person a

stranger or an acquaintance? Are his/her actions based on hate or revenge, or

will it be a random act of violence? Will someone die? Will the intruder get

ow will the story end? us the artist continues to draw the spectator

into the art work by appealing to their imaginations and desire to construct a

narrative.

While I have paid attention to discussing what is in the photographs, what

is equally important is what is not imaged. In autobiographically-based feminist

art work, the artist frequently photographs herself in some manner: self-

portraits of her face; her nude or clothed body; details of her form. In this type of

art, the artist makes a direct and tangible statement about herself as a specific

embodied subject at a specific historical moment. While there are definite

advantages to using images of one's physical body, feminists have discovered

that there are also drawbacks. First and foremost are issues around the female

form, which has historically been regarded as an object and not a subject within

visual cultural history. A female artist's photograph of her form, whether nude

or clothed, evokes

drawback is that a

this history of objectification, whether desired or not. Another

photograph provides very specific visual information about

the person so there is no room for the viewer's imagination, even when written

information is also presented.

To de-emphasize the visual so as to direct the viewer to the artist's

subjectivities, what is needed is to draw attention away from the female body as

an object. One way to emphasize women's subjectivity is to not have their

bodies physically represented. However, this is not to suggest, as Peter Gidal

posits, that images of women should simply not be portrayed at al1 until we have

come up with new representational practices. Rather, the portrayal and

representation of women's physical form is a very important activity for feminist

artists because it shows diversity among women in a tangible way, and these

challenge patriarchal constructions as well as the history of female objectification.

In certain circumstances, such as in Pelkey's "dreams of life and death," it can be

advantageous not to represent the female body, but instead, to imply its

existence through the use of accompanying persona1 texts. Her body is

physically absent but her subjectivity is present--as indicated through the

persona1 narratives. By not photographing her physical form, Pelkey does not

engage with issues arising from the presence of the female body.

way that this series creates feminist spectatorship positions for men and women.

With no physical manifestations of the artist in the tableaux images, the spectator

is not compelled to identify with a physical form thus issues related to the male

gaze are avoided. When the viewer is only presented with a photograph of a

location which corresponds to the artist's memories and this is al1 the visual

information provided, the spectator can more easily form his/her own

interpretations of Pelkey's subjectivities.

Pelkey manages the visual information in such a way as to engage the

spectator's imagination, w ch makes the silent tableau stage come alive. The

audience considers what is depicted in the photographs, interprets the

information, formulates the event in his/her rnind, and fills in the rnissing

information that Pelkey's sketchy details do not include. The spectator animates

the otherwise action-less stage, extending the story beyond what is suggested in

the text panels and displayed in the photographs. Details become springboards

for the spectator's imagination. For example, in the triptych telephone booth

(illustration 7), the viewer is @en many details regarding a man Pelkey once

dated:

No one knew why he killed ex. He was engaged to be married and just built a house.

He borrowed a gun from his cousin.

Two weeks previously he had invited me in to see his new house. I had admired the kitchen taps and seen the bedroom where he later died.

When we had dated briefly he told me that he would not live beyond tlurty. 1 thought perhaps he had been too influenced by 'the movies'.

He loved to honk his horn when driving by telephone booths. He told me that the person could be talking to someone in Ontario and that then his truck horn would be heard in Toronto.

Based on the fragments provided by Pelkey, the spectators use their

imaginations, their own interpretations and experiences to fil1 the gaps left by

Pelkey and in doing so, the viewers produce intersubjectivities.

Like the tableau, the text itself is another medium that can be molded. As

seen in the previous passage, Pelkey manipulates language by providing the

audience with fragments of her memories--just enough to establish a story line

without making it a closed text. at also warrants mentioning is the way her

memories are delivered in such an abbreviated manner. The moments of recall

seem to be emerging from the artist's shocked psyche. Further, her words seem

detached, or more accurately perhaps, the words are fragments of memories

delivered in a matter-of-fact way without the insertion of (overly) emotional

comments about these past events. ecause the text can be interpreted as a

'voice-over' or narration as found in films, it seems to require being read in a

monotone or subdued manner, or perhaps in a low voice. s reveals Pelkey's

manipulation of language; furthermore, she does more than simply recount her

memories; she confesses to the viewer as seen in the narrative in yard (illustration

1 never knew that he beat her.

She wept in my kitchen.

She was away.

1 looked after the children. He carne home drinking. We al1 got into the truck and drove for hours in the night to homes of strangers.

I can only remember clearly the next day.

From the first line of the text, Pelkey discloses disturbing events.

confessional tone irnmediately creates an intimate relationship, an

intersubjectivity, between herself and the spectator akin to what two very good

friends may share after years of establishing a friendship. This kind of divulging

of personal information would not take place in anything less than a trusting,

safe environment. Perhaps it is a way to unburden herself--a cathartic exercise--

and the reader/spectator is the sympathetic listener. On the other hand, there is

also a type of sanctuary when sharing persona1 details with a total stranger

where neither the confessor nor the listener has any ng to risk, lose, or gain

through such an exchange. However, neither the tone of the text nor the

information it relays has a sense of a reckless disclosure to a stranger. Rather, the

texts assume there is a bond between friends--an intimacy between the spectator

and the artist which situates the viewer, perhaps even burdens them, with

persona1 knowledge of her life.

While the power of the text for yard positions the viewer as a close friend

through its confessional tone, other texts appeal to the spectator's imagination

through descriptive language. ore specifically, many of Pelkey's texts relay

memories that appeal to Our senses, especially auditory and olfactory. In the

triptych titled water (illustration 3), the audience's sense of hearing is invoked:

1 said it wasn't calls for help only the sound of seagulls overhead.

1 can still see the man covered in seaweed emerge from the water, walking with eyes shocked open, passing within inches of us.

1 had heard only the sound of seagulls.

In the distance an empty boat made endless circles.

ile the information itself is already intense--not recognizing cries for help and

the (possible) consequences of such a mistake--the auditory details further

dramatize the event. We can imagine the sound of water at a lake,

screeches/peoples' shrieks, and the sound of a motor boat. This makes her

memories more 'real' to the viewer. Pelkey also stimulates the spectator's sense

of smell as in the text accompanying the work titled pole (illustration 8):

all summer

we itnagjned

we could still smell

the bwned flesh

While the olfactory is the prominent sense targeted here, it also triggers the

auditory: the audience can imagine the crackling sound of electricity coming in

contact with flesh and the smell of burned flesh. The significance of the artist's

texts appealing to more than one sense in ei er a direct or indirect manner

means that the viewer's imagination is further stimulated to fil1 in details and

finish the story lines presented. Thus the spectators invent stories, personas, and

reactions based on their imaginative powers and this produces a more enduring

intersubjectivity.

Pelkey makes her memories 'real' or apparent to the viewer by providing

a large photograph (visual), which functions as a starting point for them. When

faced with a photograph of banal sites and objects illuminated in such a way as to

create a sense of mystery or intrigue, viewers interpret the image according to

their own experiences. Because the text components are not visible to spectators

while they are looking at the image (they have to walk closer to the art thus

compromising the proper viewing distance), this demands the viewer either see

the photograph or read the text but not both at the same time. Ideally, the

spectator creates his or her own meanings based on the photograph itself before

reading the accompanying text. When presented with the artist's information,

the spectator physically and mentally moves between the visual and the written

information, navigating between their own story lines and Pelkey's memories.

is negotiating between their own narratives and the ones presented by Pelkey

produces an enduring intersubjectivity: the audience interprets and participates

in constructing meaning for the work based on what they have read and what

they want the photographs to mean. The intersubjectivity created can be so

strong that Pelkey's memory easily becomes part of the viewer's experiences;

for example, the next time a spectator sees a lone telephone booth lit up at night,

he or she may recall the man that Pelkey briefly dated, the one who eventually

committed suicide, the man who would honk his horn if someone was using a

phone booth. In such recollections, Pelkey's memories become part of the

spectator's memories, hence a part of their history.

The various techniques described in this chapter assist in the formation of

Pelkey's subjectivity. In fact, the artist's subjectivity is only completed by

spectators: when they see Pelkey's tableaux images, read her text, and formulate

their own meanings based on a combination of her information and their own

experiences, the audience is relating to the (woman) artist as a subject. She is no

longer someone whom we have not met; she is no longer a silent and passive

"Woman." Rather, through her use of persona1 experiences as the basis for her

tableau photography, Pelkey stages her memories; through

manipulation of text, she sets up an intersubjective relations

work and the spectator.

Tableau photogra y, personal nawatives,

and spectators ip as feminist strategies

The intention of this thesis has been two-fold: 1 located strategies for the

creation of feminist subjectivities, and ascertained how feminist spectatorship

positions are possible in relation to Brenda Francis Pelkey's series, "dreams of life

and death." 1 focused upon three general areas: photography, autobiography,

and spectatorship, and investigated specific elements from within each: tableau

photography, persona1 narratives based on memories, and ferninist

spectatorship positions. le the three specific areas cannot be claimed as

strictly "feminist" mediums and methods, they are feminist strategies in two

ways: they challenge patriarchal notions of "Woman," and second, when

employed in specific combinations, they enable artists to re-write and re-present

feminist subjectivities, and position the cultural texts so as to create ferninist

spectators.

To generate feminist notions of "Woman," 1 argued the tableau approach

to photography presents a stage upon which these subjectivities can be

composed and/or performed before they are photographed. Within this theatre,

artists carefully construct their subjectivities, and through photography,

transform the objects and people in their tableaux into codes and conventions.

Manipulating these codes and conventions enables artists to re-write and re-

present feminist definitions of "Woman," that is, women as subjects and not

objects. When presented as subjects, it is also important that women are not

homogenized as white, heterosexual, and western, but instead that diversity

among them is recognized because as Susan Stanford Friedman states in

Mappings: Feminisrn and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter,

pluralization has contributed profoundly to the expansion and diversification of feminism; it has been vitally necessary ... for the development of a multicultural, international, and transnational femini~rn.~~

While tableaux artists such as Cindy Sherman (American) and Diana

orneycroft (Canadian) have photographed their physical bodies so as to

engage dialogues and debates with various issues surrounding the female body,

Pelkey has not turned the camera upon her body, or another woman's form, for

that matter. By not photographing the female body, she removes her series

from debates on the objectification of the female body. owever, Pelkey's work

still engages with issues around the formation (and reception) of a female

subject: although her body is physically absent, Pelkey's subjectivities are still

present and expressed through persona1 narratives displayed on text panels

located near each diptych/h.ipqch. She selects what memories will be shared

with the audience and how the text will be delivered; this gives her control over

the creation and presentation of her subjectivities. This control is extended

further when the persona1 information is based on memory. ecause memories

are re-worked and re-remembered, whether consciously or not, the information

provided may not be entirely accurate. In fact, it may be part fact and part

fiction. Whatever information about herself is presented, the audience cannot pin

her down to one specific subjectivity because of the evasiveness and inaccuracy

of memory. Furthermore, language itself can never represent the whole person;

at best, an audience receives glimpses of subjectivities that are mobile and in-

progress.

54 Susan Stanford Friedman, Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 4.

While an artist can use various autobiographical elements such as first

person narratives taken from his/her memories and used in conjunction with

tableaux images, this is only the first step to constructing a text that articulates

subjectivities. It is the spectator who completes the process of communication

begun by the artist. For feminists, the viewer is very important because he or

she reads the persona1 narratives, sees the photographs, and through his/her

interpretation and interaction with the art, brings meaning to the work by

completing the artist's subjectivity. However, the viewer must be defined in a

specific way. Theories of spectatorship from Cultural Studies are the most

appropriate for this thesis because it describes the spectator as not completely

fashioned by discourse, nor does he/she have an essential core. The viewer is

socially constituted (rather than completely formed by ideology or an essential

self), and this allows for active readers: meanings emerge from the cultural text

through the viewer's active involvement with it. e spectator has the ability to

recognize dominant ideology at work and this is important because viewers are

able to create oppositional readings, that is, readings that do not align with

dominant discourse. Because of this, feminist spectatorship positions are possible.

From the persona1 narratives, audience members, regardless of their gender, can

relate to Pelkey as a subject. The viewers imagine her as a person existing in the

material world, experiencing actual deaths, and metaphorical "deaths" such as a

lover's betrayal. By relating to these memories and experiences, an

intersubjective connection or relationship is formed between the viewer and

Pelkey as a person, as a woman--as a subject.

In her series, Pelkey

foster this intersubjectivity

strategically positions viewers to both facilitate and

through the art work itself, the way in which the

images are hung in the gallery, and the lighting of the photos and the gallery

lighting. From my own experience when 1 saw this series installed in the Gordon

Snelgrove Gallery in 1994, it was the large photographs and the spotlights on

each diptych/triptych that first captured my attention. The main gallery lights

were dimmed, while each diptych or triptych was illuminated by a gallery

spotlight (illustration 1). This combination of large photographs with spotlights

on them set the atmosphere and mood: 1 was entering a space where

information would be revealed to me rather than explained or directed. As 1

glanced around the gallery space, the photographed subjects were easily

recognizable; they were locations or objects such as a yard, waves of water, a

telephone booth, and so forth. The question foremost in my thoughts was why

would someone photograph such banal sites/objects, and go through the effort

to print them so large. The size of the photographs and use of ilfochrome paper

suggested that the subject matter should be important but the content of each

photograph was, to say the least, unexciting and even boring. Furthermore, the

photographs did not tell me anything: as individual images, they seemed to be

snapshots; as a series of images, they did not seem to form an obvious narrative.

e most interesting aspect of the series was the way in which most of the seven

assembled photographs were illuminated in a theatrical manner before the

photographs were taken.

The most intriguing element for me was this theatrical lighting because it

sparked my imagination; it made me curious. For example, in tree (illustration 9),

there was something unsettling about the large tree being so brightly lit while

everything else in the photographic panels fell into the darkness of the night.

lighting could not be a backyard light because it was simply too bright. The light

source seemed more akin to a search light--but what were they searching for in a

hee and at night? A crirninal trying to escape from police? A lost child, or a child

that had run away? A stranded cat? However, there are no clues or details in the

branches that support any of my hypotheses, and no other information that

answers my questions of why the artist has photographed this tree at night and

why the need for the aid of a spotlight.

To provide information, clues, or even a context regarding the significance

of photographing the tree, 1 turned to the accompanying text panel located

below the triptych, angled in a way that seemed to invite the reader. Perhaps the

text panels might be better described as appropriating the way information is

displayed on public monuments, at historic sites, or points of interest: the viewer

is meant to see the sculpture, vista or artifact, then read about its significance.

This moving between Pelkey's photographs of sites and objects and the text

component (since the text is located away from the image itself) is important to

how meanings are created and the ways in which the viewer's intersubjective

relationship with the artist are formed. Before reading the text panels, spectators

have formulated their own understanding of the work. It is the text--the personal

narrative--that contextualizes the photographs according to the artist's intention.

For example, in tree (illustrations 9 and IO), Felkey articulates the significance of

the tree for her:

in my dream of life, Whiskey Willie falls out of a tree and dies.

He was found on the floor of his livingroom by my brother-in-law.

The officia1 cause of death was pneumonia, we all knew he had died from cirrhosis of the liver.

Uncle bill had telephoned al1 that fa11 and called me his princess. 1 had been repulsed.

elkey gives us tidbits of (seemingly) insignificant particulars about her "uncle"

which provide a starting point for the audience to construct a character sketch of

the man and to further develop the story line.55 From the details provided, the

audience imagines the character of iskey Willie, what he may have looked

like, as well as his lifestyle. However, we also have our own initial interpretation

of this photograph that either needs to be abandoned for the artist's meaning, or

to be somehow worked into the information provided. own process was to

discard my initial story for the artist's story (it was much more intriguing), and

replace it with my own continuation of the story. Pelkey's fragments of persona1

narrative became a beginning point from which I further developed my own

narrative. It is this viewer interpretation and active involvement that initiates and

sustains an intersubjective relationship thereby assisting in the formation of

ferninist spectatorship positions. Targeting the spectators' imagination is vital to

the reading and completion of Pelkey's subjectivities. By enticing their

imaginations through fragments of information, and by having these details

appeal to their senses (vision, olfactory, auditory) as seen through her specific

word choices, Pelkey fosters intersubjectivity. In fact, she does this to such a

degree that the memories portrayed in the photographs, and articulated through

the text become so 'real' to the viewer that they become part of the spectator's

55 It is interesting to note that when too many details are presented to the viewer, this impedes his/her imagination. For example, the text accompanying telephone booth is the longest of al1 the persona1 narratives in the series with 113 words; the average length

er photographs is about 50 words (excluding the text from pole which has only 11 words). When the audience is given too many details, this seems to limit, or at least restrict, the spectator's role in negotiating between the image, their own interpretation of the photograph, and the artist's memory.

experiences. In this way, the audience completes Pelkey's subjectivities while

occupying feminist spectatorship positions because they relate to her as a subject.

Outside of continuing discussions on Pelkey's art work, and indicating

feminist strategies that other artists may consider using, many O

potential research could be undertaken to expand this initial investigation. For

instance, the question could be raised at if an artist is to include the female

body in photographic art work, would representations of a nude, transgendered

body be an effective feminist strategy for creating subjectivities? 1 am thinking

here of the work of Diana Thorneycroft, and her 1996 series Fish Brides. Would

this "monstrous" body work against feminist spectatorship positions or operate

to its advantage? Also, within the realm of contemporary photographic art

production, would the female body as monstrous be advantageous to the goals

of this thesis? If so, why or why not, and wi in what specific circumstances?

at other strategies and approaches would allow for the creation of feminist

subjects and feminist spectatorship positions within other mediums such as film,

video, painting, and multi-media? In relation to textual components with

photographic work, what are other advantages of using memory, especially with

text that combines truth and fiction. While the initial investigations presented

in Creating Feminist Subjectivities and Spectatorship i n Brenda Francis Pelkey's

"dreanzs of Eife and death" by can be pursued in many different directions, these

explorations seek to accomplish a common goal: first, to have female artists exert

control over the formation and creation of their own subjectivities to

demonstrate the diversity that exists among women and how they can be

represented and accepted as subjects; second, that feminist spectatorship

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ission

I authorize you to include black and white photocopies of the photographs

from my series, "dreams of life and death," in your thesis. am aware that

you are granting an irrevocable non-exclusive license allowing the National

Gallery of Canada to reproduce, loan, distribute or sel1 copies of this thesis by

any rneans and in any form or format to make it available to interested

perçons.

llustration 1

installation view of Brenda Francis Pelkey's " d r e m of life and death,"

specifically,field and yard; exhibited in the Gordon Snelgrove Gallery,

University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK (1994)

Illustration 2

graveyard, from the series, "dreams of life and death" (1994)

triptych; 75 cm x 137 cm

Ilfochrome; mounted on sintra with a lustex laminate

(original artwork is in colour)

mater, from the series, "dreams of life and death" (1994)

triptych; 60 cm x 78 cm

ilfochrome; mounted on sintra with a lustex laminate

(original artwork is in colour)

l[llustration 4

field, from the series, "dreams of life and death" (1994)

triptych; 51 cm x 143 cm

ilfochrome; mounted on sintra with a lustex laminate

(original artwork is in colour)

yard, from the series, "dreams of life and death"

diptych; 125 cm x 175 cm

ilfochrome; mounted on sintra with a lustex laminate

(original artwork is in colour)

yard, detail from the text panel

from the series, "dreams of life and death" (1994)

(original arhvork is in colour)

lluçtration 7

telephone booth, from the series, "drearns of life and death" (1994)

triptych; 91.5 cm x 179 cm

ilfochrome; mounted on sintra with a lustex laminate

(original arturork iç in colour)

pole, from the series, "dreams of life and death" (1994)

triptych; 101.5 cm x 181 cm

ilfochrome; momted on sintra with a lustex laminate

(original artwork is in colour)

Iluçtration 9

tree, from the series, "dreams of life and death" (1994)

triptych; 92 cm x 250 cm

ilfochrome; mounted on sintra with a lustex laminate

(original artwork is in colour)

Cree, detail from the text panel

from the series, "dreams of life and death" (1994)

(original artwork is in colour)

702 - 28th St. West, Saskatoon, SK S7L 0L4

e-mail: bpelkey@arts.usask.ca

Education MFA University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, 1994

Mount Saint Vincent Art Gallery, Halifax, NS (in October)

As if there were grace II, Anna Leonowens, Halifax, NS

As if there were grace/Oblivion, Estevan National Exhibition Centre, Estevan, SK

Oblivion, The Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

Oblivion, The Little Gallery, Prince Albert, SK

"...the great effect of the imagination on the world," Fotofeis,

Gracefield Studios, Dumfries, Scotland, UK

dreams of life and death, Gordon Snelgrove Gallery, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK

-MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, SK

"... the great effect of the imagination on the world," national tour organized by the Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina, SK

-Moose Jaw Art Museum, Moose Jaw, SK

-Floating Gallery, Winnipeg, MB

-Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, BC

Ambivalence, Workshop Gallery, The Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

"...the great effect of the imagination on the world"

-Robert McLaughlin Art Gallery, Oshawa, ON

-VU Centre DfAmination et de la Photographie, Quebec, PQ

-Vernon Art Gallery, Vernon, BC

-Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

"...the great effect of the imagination on the world"

-Art Gallery of Windsor, ON

-Northern Life Museum, Fort Smith, NWT

-Sir Wilfred Grenfell Art Gallery, Cornerbrook, NFLD

-Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, AB

Solo Exhibitions, cont.

1991 "...the great eflect of the imagination on the world"

-Dunlop Art Gallery, Regma, SK

1990 Foundry, The Photographers Gallery, Main Gallery, Saskatoon

Selected Two and T erson Exhibitions

1997 DisJocation Markers: Marian Penner Bancroft, Brenda Pelkey, Arthur Renwick; curated by Cheryl Sowkes

-Windsor Art Gallery, Windsor, ON

1997 Memento Mori, 2 person show with Grant McConnell, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

1996 DisJocation Markers: Marian Penner Bancroft, Brenda Pelkey, Arthur Renwick; curated by Cheryl Sourkes

-Toronto Photographers Workshop, Toronto, ON

2001 Evoking Place, touring 4 person exhibit, curated by Andrea Kunard

-Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa, ON

2000 Photographic Encounters, Kamloops Art Gallery, K

2000 Points of View: Canadian Women Artists, McMaster Art Gallery, Hamilton, ON

2000 Home Heaven and Place, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, SK (provincial tour)

1997 90th Anniversary Exhibition, Kenderdine Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

1997 25th Anniversary Show, The Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

1997 Modus Operendi: Conception and Method, Kenderdine Art Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

1996 Smashing the Camera, McMaster Art Gallery, Hamilton, ON

19 9 6 Living Units, McDonald Stewart Art Gallery, Guelph, ON

1996 Interpellation, Gordon Snelgrove Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

-The Works, Edmonton, AB

1996 Search Image Identity: Voicing Our West, Museum of Photography, Helsinki, Finland

1996 Saskatchewan Portraits, organized by The Saskatchewan Arts Board to tour the province

1996 Photographs from the Permanent Collection, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

1995 Faculty Show, Gordon Snelgrove Gallery, U of SI Saskatoon, SK

1995 Art on Site, Public Works, Broadway Royal Bank, Saskatoon, SK

1995 Interpellation, London Gui1 all University, London, UK

1995 Search Image Identity: Voicing Our West, Truck, Calgary, AB

Search Image Identity: Voicing Our West, touring exhibition organized by the Photographers Gallery

-The Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

-The Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna, BC

-Floating Art Gallery, Winnipeg, MB

-Gallery 44, Toronto, ON

-The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff, AB

-Struts, Sackville, NB

Remembering and Telling, MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, SK

Transpositions, Public Works, Sky Train Station Art Exhibition, Vancouver, BC

The Faculty Show, Gordon Snelgrove Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

Between Time and Place

-The Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

-Toronto Photographers Workshop, Toronto, On

Saskatoon Imagined: Art and Architecture in the Wonder City

-The Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

-The MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, SK

Faculty Show, Gordon Snelgrove Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

Two Way Risk, AKA Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

Sask Open, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

The Transmutation of Substance into Image, Gallery 44, Toronto

Artist Lectures, Panels,

20 0 1 Visiting Artist; Bishops University, Lennoxville, QC (in October)

2001 Artist talk, Sheridan College, Oakville, ON

1999 Talk, UAAC Conference, London, ON

1999 Juror, Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg MB

1998 CC Visiting Artist, McMaster Museuin, McMaster University, Dundas Valley

School of Art, Hamilton, ON

1997 Panel Discussion, Photographer's Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

1995 Artist talk, Fotofeis, Dumfries, Scotland, UK

1995 Canada Council Photography Jury

Artist Lectures,

1994 Artist talk, Moose Jaw Art Gallery

Canada Council Visiting Artist:

-Vernon Art Gallery, Vernon, BC

-Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna, BC

-Caribou College, Kelowna, BC

1994 CC Visiting Artist, Confederation Art Gallery, Charlottetown, PEI

1992 Artist talk, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

1991 Artist ta&, op Art Gallery, Regina, SK

199 1 Saskatchewan Arts Board Juror

1989 Saskatchewan Arts Board Juror

1989 Panel Discussion, "Mutating Strategies; New Directions in Documentary Photography," Photographer's Gallery, Saskatoon

Awards and Grants

2000 B Grant, Canada Council

1998 B Grant, Canada Council

1996 B Grant, Saskatchewan Arts Board

1995 B Grant, Canada Council

1995 B Grant, Saskatchewan Arts Board

1995 Travel Grant, Saskatchewan Arts Board

19 94 University of Saskatchewan Graduate Scholarship

1992 B Grant, Saskatchewan Arts Board

1990 B Grant, Saskatchewan Arts Board

1989 B Grant, Saskatchewan Arts Board

1988 B Grant, Saskatchewan Arts Board

1977 Ontario Arts Council

1994 - present Associate Professor, photography and digital media, Department of Art & Art History, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Collections

MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, SK

Canadian Museum Of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa, ON

Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

The Canada Council Art Bank

Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg,

Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina, SK

Saskatchewan Arts Board, Regina, SK

The Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

McMaster Art Gallery, Hamilton, ON

University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK

Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, BC

ibliography

Arnott, Ryan. "Flash Fiction." Blackflash, Vol. 13, no. 1, Spring 1995: 8, 17.

Bell, Lynne and Cindy Richmond. Remembering and Telling: Stories of Identity and Location [exh. cat.]. Regina, SK: MacKenzie Art Gallery, 1991.

Garrett-Petts, W.F. and Donald Lawrence. "Photographic Encounters: The Edges and Edginess of Reading Prose Pictures and Visual Fictions." University of Alberta Press and Kamloops Art Gallery, 2000: 109, 114,132-50, 142-4, 148-50.

Gilmour, Alison. 1994. "Night-lit ornaments focus of 'voyeurism,"' Winnipeg Free Press, April23,1994, Entertainment section.

Gustafson, Paula and Carol Williams. Search Image Identity: Voicing Our West [exh. cat.]. Saskatoon, SK: The Photographers Gallery, 1995.

Kunard, Andrea. "The Social Document," Le Mois de Photo a Montreal, 1999: 32.

Laurence, Robin. "When Art Takes us Down the Garden Path," The Vancouver Weekend Sun, August 5,1994.

Mahon, Patrick. "Search Image Identity: Voicing Our West," Artichoke, Vol. 7, no. 1, Spring 1995: 36-40.

McDonald, Vern. "The Grass Menagerie," The Georgia Straight, August 5,1994: 12/36.

Phillips, Elizabeth. "Fantasy Gardens," Western Living, Aug. 1991.

Preston, Ian. "...the great effect of the imagination on the world," Shadowland Moving Pichire Co. Ltd., 1992, 23 minute video.

Richmond, Cindy. "Picturing Home," ARTSatlantic, 60, Spring 1998: 36-40.

Rir~g, Dan. "Mnemonic Obsession: Recent Photographs by Brenda Pelkey," Blackflash, Vol. 11, no. 1, Spring 1993.

Ring, Dan. 1996 "Landscape '96"

Robertson, Sheila. "Private Spaces Fascinating in Public Documentation," Saskatoon Star Phoenix, Nov. 1992.

Langford, Martha. "Shifting Horizons" tu be published in a book edited by Liz Wells; Published in the UK.

Langford, Martha. "Landscapes of Immanence," Border Crossings, issue 68,1998: 50-54.

Marzolf, Helen. "...the great efect of the imagination on the world," [exh. cat.]. Regina, SK: Dunlop Art Gallery, 1991.

Meszaros, Cheryl. "...the great effect of the imagination on e world," Blackflash, Vol. 9, No. 4, Winter 1992.

Mius, Julian. "Brenda Pelkey, Photographer," NeWest Review, Nov. 1990.

Murray, Don and Todd Davis. "Transpositions: A Public Exhibition of Contemporary Canadian Photography," Active Artifacts Cultural Association Catalogue, Vancouver, BC, April/May 1990.

AL EDUCATIO

Fa11 2001 Ph. D. Candidate, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC

Master of Arts degree, History in Art University of Victoria, Victoria, BC

Bachelor of Arts degree, Double Honours Studio Art (Photography) & Art University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK

Bachelor of Arts (Advanced Certificate) English Literature University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK

GRANTS, FELLO

University of Victoria Fellowship (Ph.D. level)

University of Victoria, Excellence Recniitment Award

Camosun College, Faculty Association; Persona1 Development Grant

Carnosun College, Faculty Association; Personal Development Grant

University of Victoria, Dept. of History in Art, Victoria, BC, Travel Grant

Arts Council of British Columbia, "C" Grant (photography)

University of Victoria, Dept. of History in Art, Victoria, BC, Travel Grant

Saskatchewan Arts Board, Creative "C" Grant (photography)

Video Vérité, Saskatoon, SK; General Video Production Support Grant

Video Vérité, Saskatoon, SK; First-The Video Producer's Grant

Saskatchewan Arts Board; Creative "C" Grant (photography)

Mar. 2001

CONFERENCE

Panel CO-chair & presenter, The Humanities Centre's Graduate Student Conference, University of Victoria Session topic: 'Telling stories' and/or Storytelling as Feminist Strategies P a ~ e r title: "Fib, Fiction, Falsehood: 'Telling Stories' as a Feminist

Strategy in the Visual Arts"

CONFERENCE AIRING PANELS, cont.

Jan. 2001

Jan. 2000

Jan. 98 - 00

Nov. 1998

March 1992

"Overcorning Her Gender: Virginity as a Political Weapon for Queen Elizabeth 1," Visual Impetus IV, History in Art Dept., University of Victoria

"Tableau Photography & Staging Female Subjectivities," Visual Impetus III, History in Art Dept., University of Victoria

Co-founder & co-organizer for Visual Impetus 1, II, and III History in Art Dept., University of Victoria

Session Chair, Universities Art Association of Canada conference, University of Western Ontario, London, ON

Session title: Constructing Identity Within the Theatre of Memory

Speakers: Brenda Francis Pelkey (University of Saskatchewan) Cheryl Meszaros (Vancouver Art Gallery) Marla Gerein (independent scholar, Saskatoon) Mark Léger (Ph.D. candidate, University of Rochester)

"Sexual Categorization and the Art/Craft Hierarchy in Nineteenth Century Britain," presented to Public Education volunteers & docents, Mendel Art Gallery (Saskatoon)

G EXPERIENCE

1997-present Visual Arts Dept., Camosun College, Victoria Part-time continuing contract; (50%, or 2 classes per regular term); teaching studio photography and art history courses

1998-99 Teaching assistant for HA 295: Introduction to Film Studies, History in Art Dept., University of Victoria; class coordinator: Patsy Kotsopolous

1996-97 Teaching assistant for HA 120: Introduction to the History of Art History in Art Dept., University of Victoria; class coordinator: Dr. Catherine Harding

1994 Photography Basics course, The Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

1993-94 Teaching assistant for Photography (Art 116,216, & 316), regular & summer tenns, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK; instructors: Frances Robson, Brenda Pelkey, and H m Dommasch

1996 Art-Apart, (with Richelle Funk) Graduate Student Lounge, University of Victoria

1994 Achieving My Beauty Potential, The Photographers Gallery (Workshop), Saskatoon

1992 Waterworks, The Photographers Gallery, Workshop Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

1992 Portraits of Women, STM Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

1992 Portraits of Women, Frances Morrison Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

199 1 Photographs using Alternative Photographie Processes, STM Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

Interior Garden, Nanairno Art Gallery, Nanaimo, BC; curator: Pamela Speight

EyeCandy, Victoria Open 2001, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Victoria, BC

curated by Jan Allen

Digital Body, Digital Space; Maltwood Gallery, University of Victoria;

curator: Rebecca Michaels

Acts of Obsession, Estevan Art Gallery, Estevan, SK; curator: Brenda Barry Byme

To Remain at a Distance, Open Space Gallery, Victoria, BC; juried

Direction, Diversity Gr' Development, Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon, SK; juried

The Garden in the Machine, Workshop Gallery, Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon;

CO-curators: Richelle D. Funk & Barbara Hill-Taylor

The Garden in the Machine, "Art and Technology, Part 1," The New Gallery,

Calgary, AB; curated by Judy Cheung

Beyond: Notions of Spirituality, cwated by Marla Gerein, Saskatoon; based from

AKA Gallery, Saskatoon; towed Saskatchewan

Interpellation, London, England; juried by The Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon

Interpellation, Gordon Snelgrove Gallery, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon

Interpellation, The Works, A Visual Arts Celebration, Edmonton, AB

14th Annual Vancouver Juried Exhibition, The Community Arts Council of

Vancouver Gallery, Vancouver

Women Sharing Vision, AKA Artist-run Centre, Saskatoon, SK

Art in Public Places; project based from The Photographers Gallery, Saskatoon

The Saskatchewan Open, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon; juried by Keith Wallace

A Show of Energy, curated & toured Sask. by the Sask. Arts Council, Regina, SK

VI E ITIONS

Bereft, curator: Sylvie Fortin, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Gallery, Buffalo, N'Y Art on Site, site specific work around the city of Saskatoon, SK

The Production Support Screening, Video Vérité, Saskatoon, SK

New Tapes '94: Video by Saskatchewan Artists, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon;

curated by Dan Ring

Video a la Fringe, Saskatoon Fringe Festival, curated by Sheila Urbanoski

The First Time, Video Vérit6, Saskatoon, SK

New Tapes '93: Video by Saskatchewan Artists, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon;

curated by Dan Ring

LICATIONS

FORWCOMING in 2003 "Constructed Realities," Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Photography, ed. Lynne Warren, Chicago, IL: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers.

"An Monnal and Intimate Way to Leam: The Mentorship Program in Saskatoon," CARFAC Saskatchewan Newsletter, June 1994: 3-5.

"Brent Hume: Telling a Story of Farming Life in Saskatchewan," Blackflash, vol. 12/no. 1, Spring 1994: 13-15.

"Finding Voice and Gaining Ground," catalogue essay for Finding Voice exhibition at STM Gallery, Saskatoon, SK, Spring 1994; curated by Marla Gerein; unpaginated.

"When a family death isn't a loss," Video Vérité Newsletter, (Saskatoon), Feb./March 1994: X-XIII.

"Flesh & Blood, Photographer's Images of Their Own Families" (book review), Blackflash, vol. 11, no. 2, 1993: 15-18.

ARTIST TALKS

Mar. 2001

July 1998

Nanaimo Art Gallery; in relation to group exhibition, Interior Garden

Open Space Gallery, Victoria; in relation to group exhibition, To Remain at a Distance

CURATORIAL EX

Curator/Co-ordinator for STM Gallery, Saskatoon, SK

Curator/Co-ordinator for Art Underground, Saskatoon, SK

Allen, Jan. EyeCandy, published 2001 by the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Victoria, BC.

Eremondi, Eileen, Shaw Cable interview for "Waterworks" exhibition; Sept. 1992.

, Richelle D., "Beyond the Mirror: Irnaging the Self in Film," essay (unpublished) and presentation for Keith Bell's History of Photography class, University of Saskatchewan, February 1994 and January 1998 at Visual Impetus I

Pelkey, Brenda, "Four Saskatchewan Photographers", CARïAC Saskatchewan Newsletter, vol. 92-93, no. 5, Oct. 1993, 7-9.

Robertson, Sheila, "Anniversary Show Marks Changing Face of Photography", Saskatoon Star Phoenix, 01 March 1997, Clo.

----- "Show Tribute to Women Who've Made a Difference", Saskatoon Star Phoenix, Lifestyles extra, May 7, 1994, C 16.

Speight, Pamela. lnterior Gardens, Nanaimo Art Gallery, Nanaimo, BC; March 2001

Wonnacott, Justin, "File Not Found," BlackfZash, 14.3, Fa11 1996: 15-17.

Yakimoski, Nancy, "Achieving My Beauty Potential," (artist statement & images ) Fireweed, a Feminist Quarterly of Writing, Politics, Art & Culture, issue no. 46, 1994: 24-31.

----- "Exponentially," (artist statement), Women Sharing Vision exh. cat., Summer 1994; 39-40.

----- "Achieving My Beauty Potential," (artist statement), Parallélogramme, Sum. 1994, vol. 20/1: 49.

CURRENT PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

Victoria: Open Space Artist Centre; Art Gallery of Greater Victoria

Vancouver: Presentation House Gallery

Saskatoon: The Photographers Gallery

Nationally: Universities Art Association of Canada