Debbie Grossman
Debbie Grossman (born 1977) is an American photographer who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.[1][2]
Early life and education[edit]
Debbie Grossman was born in 1977. She was originally from Rochester, New York. Grossman holds a BA in Women's Studies and Art History from Barnard College.[3] She received an MFA in Photography, Video, and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts, where she won the Paula Rhodes Memorial Prize.[3]
Career[edit]
Grossman's work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,[4] the Museum of Fine Arts Houston,[5] and the Jewish Museum.[citation needed]
In her 2011 show, My Pie Town, Grossman created her best known body of work by manipulating photographs first created by Russell Lee of a small community of homesteaders in Pie Town, New Mexico.[6]
My Pie Town first showed at Julie Saul Gallery from April 14 – May 21, 2011.[7] In these images, Grossman reworks and re-imagines a body of images originally photographed by Russell Lee for the United States Farm Security Administration in 1940.[8] Using Photoshop to modify Lee's pictures, Grossman created an imaginary, parallel world – a "Pie Town" populated and governed exclusively by women.[6][9]
Grossman first saw the Lee's Pie Town pictures in the book Bound For Glory and obtained high resolution public domain versions of them on the Library of Congress website.[10] Using sixteen of Lee's unpublished series on Pietown, a homesteaded community in New Mexico, Grossman took male bodies and rendered them to look like masculine women; in others, she shifted the body language of pairs of women, bringing them closer to create a sense of intimacy.[3] Grossman says of the project "I’ve begun to think of Photoshop as my medium – I’m fascinated by the fact this it shares qualities with both photography and drawing…..I enjoy imagining My Pie Town working as its own kind of (lighthearted) propaganda".[11] ..."[Lee's] pictures of the town are tinged with his mythologizing of a difficult way of life and the land-conquering kind of patriotism that’s a foundation of the American story. I share Lee’s nostalgia. Seventy years later, I am drawn to a similar utopian ideal. ... I’ve had a lifelong obsession with frontier life. I fantasize about locating myself within those pictures and that time. So in an attempt to make the history I wish was real, I have made over Pie Town to mirror my fantasy."[12]
Exhibitions[edit]
Solo exhibitions[edit]
- My Pie Town, Julie Saul Gallery (2011)[7]
Group exhibitions[edit]
- Composed: Identity, Politics, Sex, The Jewish Museum, (2012)[13]
- The Gender Show, Eastman Museum (2013)[14]
- After Photoshop : Manipulated Photography in the Digital Age, The Metropolitan Museum 5th Ave (2013)[15]
- FRAMING DESIRE: Photography and Video, The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (2015)[16]
References[edit]
- ^ Goto, Yumi. "For Women Only: Re-imagining Russell Lee's Pie Town". Time. Retrieved 2020-03-08.
- ^ MacDonald, Kerri (2013-06-13). "Examining Identity, Gender Image by Gender Image". Lens Blog. Retrieved 2020-03-08.
- ^ a b c "Brooklyn Museum: Debbie Grossman". www.brooklynmuseum.org. Retrieved 2020-03-08.
- ^ "Debbie Grossman". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 22 June 2021.
- ^ "Debbie Grossman: Couple at community meeting". mfah.org.
- ^ a b "Debbie Grossman- My Pie Town". In the In-Between. 2013-03-02. Retrieved 2020-03-08.
- ^ a b "Julie Saul Projects – My Pie Town – Images". juliesaulprojects.com. Retrieved 2020-03-08.
- ^ "History and Herstory: Pie Town Pics Revisited". Reading The Pictures. 2011-05-26. Retrieved 2020-04-20.
- ^ x-publishers. "My Pie Town". www.gupmagazine.com. Retrieved 2020-03-08.
- ^ www.themorningnews.org, The Morning News LLC. "My Pie Town". The Morning News. Retrieved 2020-03-08.
- ^ "Julie Saul Projects – 2011 – My Pie Town". juliesaulprojects.com. Retrieved 2020-03-08.
- ^ "Debbie Grossman Archives". The Center for Fine Art Photography. Retrieved 2020-03-08.[permanent dead link]
- ^ "The Jewish Museum". thejewishmuseum.org. Retrieved 2020-03-08.
- ^ "My Pie Town". www.eastman.org. George Eastman Museum. Retrieved 2020-03-08.
- ^ "After Photoshop: Manipulated Photography in the Digital Age". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 22 June 2021.
- ^ "FRAMING DESIRE: Photography and Video". www.themodern.org. Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Retrieved 2020-03-08.