Gaskell is known for her series of brilliantly colored, large-scale photographs that present young girls in a variety of psychologically charged situations that elude specific narratives. Gaskell enhances the theatricality and artificiality of her photographs by using techniques often associated with film: manipulation of the viewerÕs point of view, exaggerated cropping or lighting, and alteration of depth of field. These approaches help present her adolescent models as both innocent and sinister.

Complementing the photographs in the exhibition are drawings that were made while developing ideas for this project. The pen and ink drawings provide a rare glimpse of the artist's working process and demonstrate how ideas percolate and migrate back and forth between media. Like the photographs, the drawings offer up a mysterious and fantastic world in which girl's bodies are stretched, twisted, and contorted as they struggle to create identities. Stylistically recalling the macabre imagery of illustrator Edward Gorey and darkly erotic drawings of symbolist artists Aubrey Beardsley and Egon Schiele, Gaskell's sinuous black line takes the viewer where the photographs cannot, deeper into a fictive world where anything is possible.

An artist's book, published by the Addison Gallery, accompanies the exhibition and is available for purchase at the museum. $18.00

Developed to complement the exhibition, resemblance, the Addison presents MOVING PICTURES: Beautiful, Heavenly, Gorgeous.

The exhibition and accompanying artist's book is made possible with the generous support of Michéle and Jeffrey Klein, Marlene and David Persky, and the Peter Norton Family Foundation.

On view through April 21, 2002, resemblance features recent photographs by Anna Gaskell, many of which were created during the artist's visits to Phillips Academy as the Addison Gallery's Edward E. Elson artist-in-residence.

Inspired by literary sources such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Villiers de l'Isle Adam's "Tomorrow's Eve," and E.T.A. Hoffmann's "The Sandman," resemblance offers the possibility of creating one's history. Dressed in white lab coats, Phillips Academy female students are cast by Gaskell as young technicians attempting to create an "ideal person." Their goal is to use their own hands to build the very person who made them. resemblance explores issues of creating and/or recreating one's maker, one's antecedent, and therefore one's past. According to Gaskell's narrative, the more ideal their creator, the closer to perfection the young girls will become.

© Anna Gaskell, Untitled #1, 2001, C-Print,
30 x 40 in.

A Des Moines native, Anna Gaskell divides her time between New York and Iowa. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and Yale University, where she received a Masters of Fine Art. Gaskell has presented solo exhibitions at the Aspen Museum of Art, Aspen, Colorado; Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, Florida; White Cube, London; Castello di Rivoli, Torino, Italy; and the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa; and participated in numerous group exhibitions. GaskellÕs group exhibitions include "Photography: An Expanded View," Guggenheim Museum, New York; "Generation Z," P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York; and "Stills: Emerging Photography in the 1990Õs," Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, among others.