Katy Grannan

"Diane Arbus once wrote to a friend, 'I think it does, a little, hurt to be photographed.' In two remarkable shows, Grannan reveals the discomfort wrapped up in the desire to be exposed, as she photographs strangers who replied to ads she placed in newspapers soliciting models. The results are embarrassing and riveting, like overhearing a humiliating secret. The large-scale color pictures at Van Doren are set in public parks; they’re stark and sometimes overtly disturbing (a naked man with an erection glares defiantly at the lens, a woman in an orange bikini poses in a mortified hunch). Smaller, black-and-white images at Salon 94, shot indoors, are more lavish and complex. Models lounge against patterned wallpaper in fishnet stockings and satin robes, and here, Grannan’s frankness is tinged with a peculiar glamour. Think Walker Evans trying his hand at pinups." - as reviewed in The New Yorker Sept 22, 2003.

  thanks to Conscientious