Woman Crying (Comic) #21, 2019

Anne Collier’s photographs challenge the perception of women in Western societies and their exploitation in commercial images. Woman Crying (Comic) #21 is part of an ongoing series in which Collier photographs magazine covers, postcards, posters, CD covers, old books, manuals, and calendars from the 1960s–80s. The artist singles out images featuring women, drawing attention to their character as either vulnerable or objects of desire. The women – actresses and models -are tightly-cropped and dramatically enlarged and are shown in heightened emotional states. These highly seductive images of manufactured emotion were originally targeted to a predominantly female audience, serving to reinforce the image of the emotionally or psychologically unstable female subject.