photo-eye | BLOG: New Work – Jennifer Greenburg: Revising History

I have never been good at handling unwarranted attention, 2015 © Jennifer Greenburg | Archival Pigment Print, 24 x 30", Edition of 3, $3,500

photo-eye Gallery is thrilled to announce Jennifer Greenburg, our latest addition to the Photographer's Showcase. Greenburg challenges social norms and the nature of vernacular photographs in her current series Revising History. Seamlessly interjecting herself in mid century images from the 1940's – 60's, Greenburg creates convincing counterfeit moments liberating the pictures from reality and reminding us of photography's fragile relationship with the truth. Revising History's imagery is exceptionally sharp with a sly sense of humor, while also touching on issues in today's culture and political climate in America.

"I illustrate the roles women typically found themselves in, in a past era, allegorically in order to identify that though things look different today, not enough has changed."

- Jennifer Greenburg

Something funny happened in the kitchen, 2010 © Jennifer Greenburg | Archival Pigment Print, 30 x 24", Edition of 5, $3,500

"Revising History is a study on photography, the nature of the vernacular image, and its role in creating cultural allegories. The work intends to create a dialogue about the photograph as simulacrum- the moment versus the referent. To engage these layered truths, I replace the central figure in found vernacular photographs with an image of myself.

My dreams came true the day I did hair for a fashion show, 2013 © Jennifer Greenburg | Archival Pigment Print, 24 x 30", Edition of 5, $3,500

Vernacular images create cultural narratives that we tend to trust. The danger in this is we seem to have forgotten that the picture liberates the moment from reality, erases vantage, and is inevitably susceptible to a co-opted or underwritten fantasy. The American past is often glorified in our cultural memory and I propose that it is partially due to the photographic record made during that era. Images help us remember selectively, and the myths around the period perpetuate, in part, via collective vernacular contributions. Images that depict awkward moments and point to historical oversights about race, religion, and gender are of particular interest to me as they identify a conversation we are still in midst of in the twenty-first century.

Napping with Floyd, 2011 © Jennifer Greenburg | Archival Pigment Print, 27 x 27", Edition of 5, $3,500

The work is a performance that results in a series of photographs that appear as records of time, place, and circumstance, but that are photographic impersonations. I study the central character in order to understand and relate to the meaning of the captured photograph. I then replicate the emotion, manifesting it with my own body, and augment the moment.

I've always preferred my own birthday, 2013 © Jennifer Greenburg | Archival Pigment Print, 24 x 30", Edition of 3, $3,500

I acknowledge that I create images that are a product of my bias, but I conclude that no photograph has ever been made without a bias. A photograph is a subtraction. It plucks one moment away from its context and appropriates that moment to suit an intended narrative. This is a cultural problem because we rely on photographs to tell us the truth. My end result, therefore, is no different from any other photograph: it is an expression made using the lens of personal experience. By pulling these images out of context, I cause the viewer to draw conclusions about how individuals have chosen to document their lives and how memory is forever altered by something sold to us by the photograph."

– Jennifer Greenburg