The photographs in this series are created by downloading a variety of pornographic images from the Internet, removing the bodies in Photoshop and then digitally re-drawing the backgrounds from the existing evidence. In looking beyond the camouflage of naked flesh, what remain are the carefully constructed and over-produced fictions; the mise-en-scènes of domestic space, suburban melodramas, utopian ideals and fantasies. These re-contextualized narratives offer a number of sites from which to critique underlying assumptions about class, race, desire and commodification. The title of each photograph refers to the name of the website from which the image was taken.
Laura Carton’s work has been exhibited at Kunstmuseene Bergen, Norway, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, the Queens Museum of Art, NY, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY and the ICA, Philadelphia. “Stripped,” a monograph of photographs, was published by Nazraeli Press (2010). Born in Los Angeles, Carton received a B.A. in French Literature from UC Berkeley, attended the Whitney ISP (2001-2002), and lives in New York.
Selected by Oliver Whitehead, Photoworks
Review this work: