I am a 41-year-old woman and I recognise that the older I get, the more invisible I become and the less cultural value I hold. We are all part of a culture that is desperately inhospitable to women at any age. We are told our lives don’t matter unless, of course, we are wives or mothers, and then we only matter insofar as we adequately perform those roles.
I am getting older. I suppose I am losing my looks, whatever looks I may have had. My hair is going white at an alarming rate and in some alarming places. My body is changing. With each passing day, I am confronted by new aches and discomforts, and I find myself groaning when I sit in a comfortable chair. Certain masses on my body are shifting and not to my advantage. I tell myself I am not yet middle-aged, but my body laughs.
Something else is also happening, though. I am becoming more comfortable in who I am, even as my body betrays me, even as I continue to fight the lifelong battle to feel comfortable in my skin. I am getting older, but I know things now. I am confident in my voice. I am more accepting and even accommodating of who I am because I recognise that this far in, I cannot change who I really am, I don’t want to change who I really am. And in this comfort, I find that I don’t mind that I am getting older or becoming invisible because I know how to make myself seen. I know how to make it clear that my joyfully imperfect life matters.
When a woman artist uses her work to capture the lives of women, I am always intrigued because as women, we have such intimate, common ground, but we are also different in the identities we inhabit, the lives we have lived, the way our bodies have been marked by the lives we have lived. I want to tread both that common ground and the different.
In Her, Marjorie Salvaterra allows us to see who she is, as she is, a 43-year-old woman. She makes herself more than visible. Through her camera lens, she makes herself, and a number of other women, seen and heard.
This astonishing collection of photographs is more than documentary. The images herein are strange, unexpected, whimsical, provocative. Salvaterra manipulates light and shadow, and the bodies of women. In so many of the pictures, women’s bodies are presented plainly. These women wear their skin without apology. Their eyes are darkened, the better we may see them. They wear wild wigs, big and bold, taking up space in ways women are often denied.
Many of the images offer up compelling stories and there is a current of sly wit running from the beginning of Her through the end. Take Her Last Supper, for example. Twelve women, around a long table, inside a mausoleum. Each woman is a portrait unto herself as she looks toward the woman at the centre of the table who is looking down, the palms of her hands placed flat against the table. And then there is one woman, one arm across her stomach, who is looking away. We know not what she says but to follow her gaze is a journey.
Indeed, to follow each of the images in Her is a journey into womanhood, a journey with innumerable destinations, and one that left me, and hopefully everyone who takes in this collection, shouting, to all the joyfully imperfect hers to be found in Her and beyond: I see you.
From Her: Meditations on Being Female by Marjorie Salvaterra ($50, Glitterati Incorporated).
