Artists Christina Werner
Publisher Self-published
Pages 96 pages
Available here
Christina Werner does more than simply present a collection of images of female lion trainers. In the way she orders, groups and rearranges them she calls for a new reading both of the images and of the people appearing in them. She uses collage to change the prevailing narrative, providing a new perspective on these women and emphasising shared attributes of their styles of representation, poses and gestures.
The use of collage bestows new meaning on what might otherwise be taken for merely historical photographs and illustrations. The artist’s new compilation of these images is structured neither chronologically nor by individual biography. Instead the sequence is determined by bodily postures and the protagonists’ styles of self-presentation. Some postures and gestures scarcely changed in the course of almost a hundred years: they circulated across all media because what proved to be successful once was deliberately repeated and commercialised.
