Laura Heyman

Laura Heyman
Untitled (from the series The Photographer's Wife), 2008
Paper Size: 8x10 inches
Edition of 5
C-prints produced and signed by the artist.

"The Photographer’s Wife" presents a female subject gazing intimately at the camera, suggesting an artist making images of their lover. As I embody both roles at once, this creates a fictionalized photographer as well as a fictionalized subject. The model/subject’s job is always performative — she must be able to portray the “true self,” alongside an ideal. In the case of these photographs the problem is slightly more complicated. As the model/subject, I must convey this multiple subjectivity while reflecting back to the viewer an imagined photographer/husband.

The images re-appropriate the male gaze, reimagining the history of images made by male artists of their wives and lovers. By focusing on the process of women navigating this space, I excavate the history of art and portraiture; not only the discouraging actualities of gender disparity, but also the magic that can occur when all of these different possibilities interact in some way.

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Laura Heyman is an artist, curator and educator based in Syracuse, New York. Selected exhibitions include; documenta fifteen, Kassel, DE, Taci. Anza, Parla, La Galleria Nazionale, Rome, IT, Who’s Afraid of America, Wonderland Art Space, Copenhagen, DK, 2 Rivers + 30 Years, Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, The Photographer’s Wife, Senko Studio, Viborg, DK, Don’t Move Again, Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh, PA, Pro/Deuce: Dualities and Dichotomies in Community-Based Art Practice, Clocktower Gallery, New York, NY, The African Continuum, United Nations, New York, NY.

She is the recipient of a Grace Individual Artist Grant, CNYArts Grant, Light Work Mid-Career Artist Grant, Silver Eye Grant and New York Foundation for the Arts Strategic Opportunity Stipend. Her work has been reviewed and profiled in The New Yorker, Contact Sheet, Frontiers, and ARTnews.

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