Artist’s Statement:
In this series my focus is on gender polarities as depicted in popular magazines of the 1950’s and early 1960’s.
Fortune magazine depicted (and still does) men’s world of wealth, industry and big ideas. Its advertisements were awash with imagery of invention and executives’ glamour. Women’s magazines centered on the home with all its flowing fabrics, sensuality and a dreamy interiority.
My intention is to deconstruct these images of mid-century advertising, creating narratives of ambiguity with humor and a dark edge, and revealing some of the different relationships men and women have to power, beauty and longing. The images play with the convergence of interior and exterior domains, abstract ideas and the mystery of the female form.
This series is an homage both to the handsome men in Fortune who look like all the fathers I watched in their big suits and briefcases, carpooling to a foreign land; and to the community of mothers who served egg salad sandwiches on the green lawns of suburbia.
About the Artist:
Nadine Boughton is a collage artist and photographer. Her collages use imagery from vintage magazines of the 1950’s to explore the psychology, politics and polarities of mid-century America.
Boughton was selected for the Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 in 2011, 2013 and 2014. Her work has been exhibited widely, including Davis Orton Gallery, Hudson, NY; JoAnne Artman Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA; Griffin Museum of Photography, Boston, MA; and GuatePhoto in Guatemala. She was an IRIS lecturer at The Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles, CA. Nadine’s work is represented by Trident Gallery, Gloucester, MA.
Boughton grew up in Rochester, NY, under the shadow of George Eastman’s Kodak Tower. She studied photography with Garry Winogrand, and at Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY, and Lesley University, Cambridge, MA. She currently lives in Gloucester, MA.