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Sharon with Peonies, 2009, chromogenic hand print, 40" x 30"

 

Neeta Mdahar

Flora
May 28 - July 6, 2010

opening reception: Friday, June 4th 6 - 8 pm

Personification in Websters New World Dictionary is " a figure of speech in which a thing, quality, or idea is represented as a person". In Neeta Madahar's new series of allegorical portraits Flora, opening May 28th, the traditional procedure of personification is reversed: here actual women appropriate imagery found in representations stretching back to antiquity to fashion an empowering public persona. Flora the Roman deity of flowering and fruit-bearing plants was traditionally depicted as a young woman surrounded by reveling admirers bearing floral tributes. In Madahar's Flora series her inspiration was not Botticelli but the stylized portrait photography of the 1930-50s including that of Cecil Beaton, Angus McBean and Madame Yevonde. In particular it was Yevonde's Goddesses, a series of photographs of costumed doyens of 1930s British society that served as her point of departure. Madahar's models do not grace the pages of society or glamour magazines, they are real women whose bodies and comportment exemplify a willful sense of self-possession won through lived experience.

A collaborative project each of the images began by Madahar asking a friend to choose a flower that had been adopted for use as a woman's name. This flower then became the organizing theme for each portrait. Working with a make up artist, assistants, backdrops and elaborate light set ups Madahar weds traditional art historical imagery with the full array of pictorial effects offered by the commercial portrait studio.

Flora undoes myths of the eternal feminine through its embrace of kitsch and artifice. The dramatic poses of the models match their theatrical settings. The sets flaunt their homespun construction with details like the wires that suspend a painted thunderbolt in mid air; however the stunning level of technical execution of the photographs themselves demonstrate a level of expertise that prevents us from mistaking this as a group of women playing dress-up. For all their humor, these photographs are also infused with an air of melancholy. Surrounding her subjects by blooms at their peak, Madahar underscores the vulnerability of human flesh. The glare of lights and exquisite detail of the prints reveal the delicate traces of lives lived, signs that Madahar has chosen not to erase. Although Madahar's subjects have been given the opportunity to fashion their own images of idealized femininity it is ultimately their failure to fully incarnate these archetypes that makes the photographs so poignant.

From Allan Doyle for the forthcoming book Flora published by Nazraeli Press

"Flora has been supported by many individuals and organizations including Suky Best, Sian Bonnell, Lisa Creagh, Natasha Davies Allegro, Zeynep Goktan, Anna Fox, Sian Griffith, Sarina Khan Reddy, Sharon Lloyd, Lee Maelzer, Laura Noble, Kate Owens, Melanie Rose, Rashmi Sarpal, Christina Seely, Rosemary Shirley, Helen Smith, Jennifer Anyan (styling), Kelly Barker (dressmaker), Vicki Churchill (lighting technician), Kelly Cox (hair and make-up artist), Thi Bui, Somali Clarke and Natalie Lewis (photography assistants), Rob Sara/Studio One Darkroom, the Arts Council of England, the Joy of Giving Something Inc., the National Media Museum, Nazraeli Press and Southampton Solent University."

For further information please contact Howard Yezerski Gallery 617.262.0550 Tuesday - Saturday 10-5:30pm