The 100 Day Project #52

Swept Away

Philadelphia, PA 2017

The 100 Day Project, Day 52

She has no name.

This marble bust was carved sometime between 1700 and 1720 by French sculptor René Frémin. She is described in the Philadelphia Museum of Art's records as "a woman related to an artist" — possibly. The museum's documentation tells us a great deal about Frémin's career, his technique, his later work for the Spanish royal court. It tells us almost nothing about her. The woman whose face has been preserved in marble for over three centuries does not merit a name on the label.

This is not unusual. It is, in fact, the rule.

The vast majority of female figures held in museum collections represent mythology, religion, or allegory. Venus. The Virgin. Liberty. Justice. Women as symbol, as ideal, as vessel for meaning assigned by someone else. Actual women — women who lived, who sat still for hours while someone captured their likeness in stone — are largely anonymous. Their faces preserved, their names lost, their stories untold.

I have been walking through museums my entire adult life asking the same question: whose story is not being told here? Nearly always, it’s the story of women.

In my photograph I have put her in motion. My long shutter speed sweeps her form across the frame, giving her the movement she was denied in marble. She is no longer static, no longer an object of someone else's demonstration of skill. She is going somewhere. She has somewhere to be.

I don't know her name. But I wish I did.

About the 100 Day Project: A global creative challenge where thousands of artists share a piece of their practice every single day for 100 days. I'm joining creatives around the world, and I'm excited to bring you along. Each day I'll be sharing one of my photos — some recent, some old, and some from my current project — along with the story behind it: where I was, who I was with, and why I love it.