glamour – Alison J Carr

Art Encounters (2008)

An audio piece. I recount some formative art encounters, in order to think about what remains of the encounter. The afterwards reflections; did these experiences form the artist I am now? I presented this as part of the Mid-Residency group show at CalArts.

**Wish You Were Here, Real Photographs, **Mlle De Bremont** (2008)**
Series of nine photographs
B&W fibre-based photograph, edition of 5, 51cm x 60 cm
Edition of 15, 20 cm x 25 cm

Recreations of found cigarette cards from 1939, using myself.

**Wish You Were Here, Real Photographs, **Maria Gregor** (2008)**
Series of nine photographs
B&W fibre-based photograph, edition of 5, 51cm x 60 cm
Edition of 15, 20 cm x 25 cm

**Wish You Were Here, Real Photographs, **Maryse Grandt** (2008)**
Series of nine photographs
B&W fibre-based photograph, edition of 5, 51cm x 60 cm
Edition of 15, 20 cm x 25 cm

**Wish You Were Here, Real Photographs, **Jacqueline Ford** (2008)**
Series of nine photographs
B&W fibre-based photograph, edition of 5, 51cm x 60 cm
Edition of 15, 20 cm x 25 cm

**Wish You Were Here, Real Photographs, **Iya** (2008)**
Series of nine photographs
B&W fibre-based photograph, edition of 5, 51cm x 60 cm
Edition of 15, 20 cm x 25 cm

**Wish You Were Here, Real Photographs, **Ginette Vrala** (2008)**
Series of nine photographs
B&W fibre-based photograph, edition of 5, 51cm x 60 cm
Edition of 15, 20 cm x 25 cm

**Wish You Were Here, Real Photographs, **Getty Jasonne** (2008)**
Series of nine photographs
B&W fibre-based photograph, edition of 5, 51cm x 60 cm
Edition of 15, 20 cm x 25 cm

**Wish You Were Here, Real Photographs, **Erni Erika** (2008)**
Series of nine photographs
B&W fibre-based photograph, edition of 5, 51cm x 60 cm
Edition of 15, 20 cm x 25 cm

**Wish You Were Here, Real Photographs, **Catherine Hamilton** (2008)**
Series of nine photographs
B&W fibre-based photograph, edition of 5, 51cm x 60 cm
Edition of 15, 20 cm x 25 cm

One afternoon in 2005, I came across a tin full of cigarette cards at a flea market. I leafed through to look more closely at the miniature pin-ups. I noticed the backs of the cards with the dated biographies of the girls on the cards. I selected all the dancers from the tin (there were actresses, models, swimmers and tennis players I rejected, no one in the tin I had heard of before) and bought all of them. As I walked home, I decided to recreate all the photographs using myself as the model. The original cigarette cards were objects to be held, looked at closely. They were private cards to view, collect and exchange. As enclosures in cigarette packs in the late 1930s, it was presumed that these were gifts for a male consumer. Looking at them with contemporary eyes, they look glamorous, innocent, staged and seductive.

The word glamour (magic charm, alluring beauty or charm, a spell affecting the eye, a kind of haze in the air) comes from the Scottish term gramarye (magic, enchantment, spell), an alteration of the English word grammar (any sort of scholarship)
http://ewonago.wordpress.com/2009/12/27/etymology-of-glamour/

I want to be a theorist. I want to be a showgirl. These two desires, which I try to reconcile, are brought together in the etymology of glamour. The glamour-spell affecting the eye. The spell of the viewer cursed to interpret what s/he sees. We can never believe what we see, because we are constantly trying to peer through the haze of our own projections onto what we see. The haze can never clear, we can never see something on its own terms because we are not mechanically viewing devices; cameras. We are interpreting subjects, condemned to only ever see through our own flawed eyes.

Sometimes I get so confused. I don’t know where to start and start in the place I know: the middle. I know for certain that I was trying to piece an idea from out of the tangle, I had to get hold of the thread and follow it, pull it apart from the others. I knew it involved photographing; portraits.

I have to get my camera out, I have to practise with it, what if I have forgotten how to work it? What if I can’t borrow lights and a tripod? Will I have to buy my own? I don’t think I can, I blew all my money on three 1950s style wrap dresses, which are en route over the Atlantic now, they sent me an email.

What if I can’t work this idea loose, if it sticks together with all the others like cooked spaghetti left in the pan? I won’t be able to tell Jaspar about it, he will think I don’t get ideas, that I don’t work on them; he will think I don’t think.

I was in the theatrical bookshop off Charing Cross two weeks ago, there was a large book I wanted, but I was erming and ahhing about the cost: £25, I didn’t know if I could afford it; but I wanted it and I didn’t get it. On the train home, I realised how important the book was, I realised I had to take glamourous photographs, not of myself, of the other residents. They are pre-selected you see. I don’t think I knew when I was on the train that I was going; I just hoped.

The book was called “They All Had Glamour”.