With her color and sepia-toned portraits of nude women in buoyantly affirmative poses, Amelia Falk takes us back to the days when Helen Reddy sang “I am Woman” and made an anthem of feminist strength and self-possession. Still pressing on with the decades-old project of “encouraging young women to love themselves and the body they were born with,” and challenging the voyeuristic “male gaze,” Falk presents her subjects reveling in their own ways of celebrating physicality. One of them, a buxom older woman, adopts a prize fighter’s pose, ready to stand toe-to-toe with all comers and announcing in the wall text: “I’m glad to know I’m a grandmother and I survived to get here!” Ironically, in a world that has witnessed Riot and Power Puff Girls, and Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, Falk’s images now seem tame and far more feminine than feminist, although there is no doubt that the message “our bodies, ourselves” still has a good deal of resonating force. (Michael Weinstein)
Opposites Attract: A Review of Nancy and David Bechtol at ARC Gallery No two artists could be farther apart in concept and style. While David’s long, long panoramic images are breathtaking in their portrayal of North American landscapes, Nancy’s wild, erratic and excitingly dynamic work is at the other end of the photographic spectrum.
Repurposing AI: A Review of Stephanie Dinkins at Stamps Gallery While this show is timely for everyone, I consider its setting within a university art gallery and emerging tech hub like the city of Ann Arbor a subversive provocation which Dinkins invites the greater public—including members of the university community—to consider our own positionality to AI and technology.
With her color and sepia-toned portraits of nude women in buoyantly affirmative poses, Amelia Falk takes us back to the days when Helen Reddy sang “I am Woman” and made an anthem of feminist strength and self-possession. Still pressing on with the decades-old project of “encouraging young women to love themselves and the body they were born with,” and challenging the voyeuristic “male gaze,” Falk presents her subjects reveling in their own ways of celebrating physicality. One of them, a buxom older woman, adopts a prize fighter’s pose, ready to stand toe-to-toe with all comers and announcing in the wall text: “I’m glad to know I’m a grandmother and I survived to get here!” Ironically, in a world that has witnessed Riot and Power Puff Girls, and Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, Falk’s images now seem tame and far more feminine than feminist, although there is no doubt that the message “our bodies, ourselves” still has a good deal of resonating force. (Michael Weinstein)
