Wednesday, September 27, 2006
“Girl Culture” photographer to present slideshow lecture at USI
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Los Angeles-based photographer Lauren Greenfield will present a slideshow lecture on her “Girl Culture” exhibition at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, October 1, in Carter Hall in the University Center at USI. The “Girl Culture” exhibit is on display at the Evansville Museum of Art, History, and Science September 24 through December 3. The exhibition is the result of a two-year effort by the museum, the Girl Scouts of Raintree Council, The Women’s Hospital, and more than 20 local organizations including social service agencies, libraries, and schools to raise community awareness about the harmful effects of media messages and cultural expectations on girls. The project was initiated in response to findings indicating girls experience strong pressure to conform to images and messages in popular culture that are not always in their best interests. In her artist statement, Greenfield writes, “Girl Culture has been my journey as a photographer, as an observer of culture, as part of the media, as a media critic, as a woman, as a girl. "I am interested in the tyranny of the popular and thin girls over the ones who don’t fit that mold. I am interested in the competition suffered by the popular girls, and their sense that being popular is not as satisfying as it appears. I am interested in the costly and time-consuming beauty rituals that are an integral part of daily life. I am interested in the fact that to fall outside the ideal body type is to be a modern-day pariah. I am interested in how girls’ feelings of frustration, anger, and sadness are expressed in physical and self-destructive ways: controlling their food intake, cutting their bodies, being sexually promiscuous. Most of all, I am interested in the element of performance and exhibitionism that seems to define the contemporary experience of being a girl.” Greenfield’s lecture is presented in cooperation with the University of Southern Indiana and the Canon Corporation and is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Mary Bower, Virginia G. Schroeder Curator of Collections, at 812/425-2406. |
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