Tanya Marcuse
Tanya Marcuse has always been intrigued by what remains, what is saved, and what is lost, in both nature and culture. In her photographic practice, she becomes a participant in these endeavors of preserving, constructing, organizing, and documenting. Many of her earlier projects focused on archives and museum collections, creating typological series and making new organizational systems for objects that have already been indexed, tagged, and displayed. In her series and book, Undergarments and Armor, made with the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she traveled to archives and museums in the U.S. and England photographing breastplates, helmets, corsets, bustles, mannequins and the dress forms that populate the storerooms. Marcuse draws together opposing categories –underwear/armor, male/female, hard/soft, armed/disarmed. She portrays these garments and suits of armor as sculptures of the body, carapaces that have outlasted their wearers.
In Wax Bodies (2006-2008) and Bountiful (2009) Marcuse photographed wax anatomical and botanical models found in museum collections. Then, after more than a decade of considering the body and the archive, she began photographing single apple trees growing on endangered land in orchards near her home in the Hudson Valley, New York. In Fruitless, she chronicled single trees in black and white large-scale prints. …
Tanya Marcuse has always been intrigued by what remains, what is saved, and what is lost, in both nature and culture. In her photographic practice, she becomes a participant in these endeavors of preserving, constructing, organizing, and documenting. Many of her earlier projects focused on archives and museum collections, creating typological series and making new organizational systems for objects that have already been indexed, tagged, and displayed. In her series and book, Undergarments and Armor, made with the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she traveled to archives and museums in the U.S. and England photographing breastplates, helmets, corsets, bustles, mannequins and the dress forms that populate the storerooms. Marcuse draws together opposing categories –underwear/armor, male/female, hard/soft, armed/disarmed. She portrays these garments and suits of armor as sculptures of the body, carapaces that have outlasted their wearers.
In Wax Bodies (2006-2008) and Bountiful (2009) Marcuse photographed wax anatomical and botanical models found in museum collections. Then, after more than a decade of considering the body and the archive, she began photographing single apple trees growing on endangered land in orchards near her home in the Hudson Valley, New York. In Fruitless, she chronicled single trees in black and white large-scale prints. Although the subject matter was new, her concern with ephemerality remained central. In Fruitless, Marcuse created a memorial for what will be lost, both through natural mortality and the artificial demise of open agricultural spaces.
Marcuse has had a number of solo shows throughout her career including Julie Saul Gallery, New York, Stephen Cohen Gallery, Los Angeles, Yoshii Gallery, New York and The Center for Photography at Woodstock, Woodstock, NY. Group shows include Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum of Art, Madrid, Spain, The International Center of Photography, New York, Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, D.C., and The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York.
Courtesy of Julie Saul Gallery
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT
The Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, D.C.
The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz, NY
San Francisco Meuseum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
The Yale Art Gallery, New Haven, CT
Julie Saul Gallery, New York, NY