The Morning News – The All Girls School, by Mara Bodis-Wollner

The Morning News – The All Girls School, by Mara Bodis-Wollner:

In Bodis-Wollner’s artist’s statement for her “All Girls School” exhibit (up now at the Jen Bekman gallery), she writes:These photographs stem from my preoccupation with the experience of disappointment amidst celebration. In this series, I focus on issues of trust, intimacy and betrayal in the friendships of women and girls; specifically how deception, unspoken exclusions, and discomfort are manifested in women’s body language and gestures.

I create the critical moment of a semi-unconscious inhibition and I look for where and how the tension just below the surface rests. Sometimes the perfect moment occurs when the gaze has landed onto a place of unselfconscious mistrust and introversion. I explore how gesture and gaze function to create an outsider, and the ways in which these visual clues shift ostracism from one subject to another both inside and outside the photograph.Precisely. But what drew us to her pictures was the storytelling. Each shot has a dozen narratives that pop off the surface if you trace the subjects’ eyes. Admiration, frustration, loneliness, jealousy—it’s your 10-year high school reunion and big family dinner all rolled into a single uncomfortable moment.

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if you’ve been on the other side of these looks, you know the feeling….