Discovered and acquired by the gallery two years ago, this group of anonymous works originally comprised one person’s curious and obsessive scrapbook. Nothing is known of the original author though the sensibility is thought to be that of an American woman of the 1870s. The unknown artist selected wood engravings from contemporaneous periodicals, and meticulously trimmed the faces from the illustrated portraits. She then made albumen print photographic portraits of her friends and inserted these in place of the missing faces from the engravings. No small feat, these faces are in the correct proportion and angle to the engraver’s original version.
This exhibition is concurrent with William Wegman: Fairy Tales and Andrew Bush: Envelopes.