Collier Schorr. ‘Both Sides Now’.
Finding her place in the New York art world, she’d learnt early on that “there was no way
to photograph a woman that wasn’t compromising on some level;” men, on the other
hand, were “open season”, and one could do with them what you wanted…. Fashion
work has also enabled Schorr to put to rest the idea that she only photographs boys,
and that is another liberation for her. “There’s something about shooting a model,” she
says “where I no longer see it as a female or male body; I see it as a fashion body.
There’s a freedom when you shoot someone in a fashion shoot because it’s all agreed
to. They go into it with an understanding that they’re about to be consumed. I know
fashion is a way to consume, to adore, to objectify a female body. I’m still completely
conflicted about it, but now i’m allowing myself just to acknowledge the gaze as a
vulnerable mode of description, the way the artist is consumed by the privilege of
description.”
vince aletti for aperture mag. spring 2011.
