CREATIVE WOMEN
Babe, the new art book curated by photographer Petra Collins, aims to inspire and provoke her fellow females,
As a young female artist, Canadian photographer Petra Collins says she “never saw a place for my work, didn’t see images I felt reflected me anywhere.”
That’s changed with Babe, the art book curated by Collins, pulling together pieces from The Ardorous, a website that showcases the work of emerging female artists. Collins, 22, lives in New York City and has had her work published by New York Magazine, GQ and Vice. She also designed a graphic T-shirt for American Apparel that was covered in Time.
Babe, she says, “is a culmination of all the pieces from the Ardorous that have inspired, provoked and aroused me throughout the years. I hope the work in this book does the same for you . . . ” Does it? We asked three creative women in Toronto.
“Danielle,” Dafy Hagai I like secrets. They can be dangerous, delicious. The woman in the picture is interrupted by the viewer (the photographer). I feel uneasy invading her privacy. She seems annoyed. But her face also looks seductive as if she was waiting for me to lie down with her. This is what’s most intriguing: I can’t figure it out if I’m being pushed away or invited. I’m at the mercy of her secret. (As I was looking at the picture my son came into the room and asked to see it. He said, “She looks like you.”)
Jowita Bydlowska is the Toronto author of Drunk Mom.
“Rorque,” Kristie Muller This image, and a lot of Muller’s work from this book, makes me think of impatience for adulthood, the second skins I’ve grown in my rush to get there and the interventions that interrupt and inform the two.
This might sound abstract, but it brings up concrete memories. I was obsessed with the beauty rituals of my three maternal aunts, all daughters of the ’70s Working Girl movement and each experts in the art of run-free nylons, tailored skirts and perfect faux perms. I’d beg them to do my makeup each year they visited for the summer, and remember truly believing as a child that sartorial know-how was the mark of maturity. Even as a bored Catholicschool teen, I’d press the pleats into my uniform kilt each night, despite the angry band patches sewn onto it and the fact that it had been shortened by an inch or five.
I’ve since learned that adulthood ideals should be pliant, but durable, and always open to the possibility that they might not be easy to wear. Kind of like nude hosiery.
Chantal Braganza is a writer and editor living in Toronto.
“Dyed in the Grass” (bottom left); “Mothers in Pastel,” Julia Baylis “I chose this work by Julia Baylis because it makes me feel an effortless calm, warmth and familiarity. The youthful colours and summer vibe are both feminine and inviting, and you can sense the quiet in the photos; it feels like long summer days with old, old friends.”
Lucia Graca is a photographer and owner of Analogue Gallery in Toronto.