Capturing the Provocative

 

“I seek the nerves under your skin…..” Patti Smith

These women photographers seek to provoke our minds and bodies. Like Patti Smith they are here to create art and in the end of their individual creative process they have provoked the audience or the viewer. They are looking to cause a rise in your temperature or simply for your mouth to fall open slightly as you gaze upon their images. Or sometimes what caught their attention from among their surroundings was provocative to them and they were drawn in to reveal that story.

They want us to shift our thoughts either socially or sexually. They want us to catch our breath, to mutter to ourselves, to feel guilt and shame for others and in some cases build a desire to help. And they have done it time after time, photograph after photograph. They shot differently and in different time periods but these women share an unspoken bond to capture the odd, the suggestive, the alone, the secret and the unphotographed.

One dared the other along a path of influence and provocation. These uniquely gifted women in our collection include Diane Arbus, Tina Barney, Lisette Model, Vivian Maier, Deborah Turbeville, Margaret Bourke-White, Cindy Sherman and Ellen von Unwerth.