Additional Images

Provenance:

Acquired directly from the artist;
Private Collection, Massachusetts

Note:

Of the spaces she photographs, Cohen explains: “I prefer to allude to things and leave it to the viewer to fill in the details. Like Brecht and Godard, I want the audience to do some of the work. For me it is best when the viewer goes back and forth and regards the photographs as documents, as constructions, as pictures with social and political messages. They don't have to be only one thing, and I'd rather not tell people how to read them.” [1] Though unpopulated by the figure at the moment the shutter clicks, Cohen’s photographs leave traces of the human — sometimes more, sometimes almost nothing — which allow the viewer to find their own points of entry to these often-bizarre locations. In Classroom in a Dog Grooming School, Minneapolis, we are left to puzzle out the workspaces of Holly, Paul and Kathy, their pinned-up article clippings and restaurant menus, the curls of canine hair.

[1] William A. Ewing, Vincent Lavoie, Lori Pauli and Ann Thomas, “Camouflage: An interview with Lynne Cohen,” in No Man‘s Land: The Photography of Lynne Cohen, ed. Ann Thomas (London: Thames & Hudson, 2001), 25.