Blaze Starr. Baltimore, Maryland
Jim Dine
American, born 1935
Lee Friedlander
American, born 1934
1968
A 1968 gelatin silver photograph titled "Blaze Starr" in which the photographer stages an intimate, confrontational portrait of a topless performer and deliberately pairs it with a separate hair-like image to unsettle expectations about identity and display.
You are struck by the performer's direct, unsmiling gaze and exposed torso set against a wide white field, while a textured, beard-like mass to the right functions as an ironic, dissonant echo.
By juxtaposing erotic portraiture with a schematic, almost caricatured mass of hair, Friedlander challenges conventional portraiture and the male gaze, turning photography into a self-aware commentary on performance, identity, and looking in the late 1960s.
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
7 1/8 × 4 5/8" (18.1 × 11.7 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Stephen R. Currier Memorial Fund
Accession
218.1970.14
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
