collier schorr

I know. Basically all my artists are Art21 artists, but I do like them!

Collier Schorr's work fascinates me because of how she articulates her idea of masculinity. The work that I am most taken with is photographs of extremely muscular, lean, wrestling boys. Her pictures capture a fascination and narcissistic appreciation of the human form. She is interested in the play involved in understanding and developing sexuality and exhibiting a 'sexiness' that is at once a part of those who exude it and completely alien to them. Her photographs are highly charged scenes of physical exertion, the moments after exertion, or moments before this exertion. I am interested in her reasons for making this work. She explains how she imagines herself as a man from time to time and as such wonders what it would be like to grow up as a male. These photographs are articulations of her imagined existence as male youth. At the same time they are a way that she deals with the aryan male. Being Jewish, she grew up at once fearing and transfixed with what an aryan male represented. Her photographs are a way of addressing who this aryan German male is and whether he is someone to be afraid of, and a way of translating this fear that is both very real and imagined.