The American artist constructs a photographic autobiography and a story of her body
It begins with a black-and-white photograph of a naked, perky-breasted mannequin, seen through the window of an otherwise empty shop. The silhouetted reflection of American photographer Rosalind Fox Solomon appears like a dark aura around the plastic woman. A Woman I Once Knew is an autobiographical sequence of journallike entries alongside self-portraits (mostly black-and-white, a few in colour). Solomon’s early experiences as daughter and wife, noted in sparse, unsentimental language, intersperse photos that depict Solomon in her late thirties, when she left her husband to pursue a career in photography, and which continue to document her ageing body for the next 50 years.
She writes about her extensive travels and her relationships with other people; sometimes she leaves them, sometimes they leave her. Mostly she pictures herself alone. Either in full body self-portraits (clothed or naked) or in closeup shots of thinning skin, bunions, scars, broken nails, sagging breasts. Occasionally these are funny, like visual jokes: in one photo she stands topless behind a plinth on which a TV screen sits at waist-height, wearing a Virgin Mary headscarf fashioned out of a beanie and shawl; behind her are skeletons dressed in formal attire and stacked on shelves as though interred in a mausoleum – a skull is turned towards the viewer, grinning. Often the photos and notes offer more questions than answers. We get to know Solomon’s body intimately, while learning only what she is willing to give us about who she is. ‘Expect to be the outsider,’ she reassures herself. ‘Embrace it.’
A Woman I Once Knew by Rosalind Fox Solomon. Mack, £55 (softcover)
From the January & February 2025 issue of ArtReview – get your copy.
