Lisa Kokin: Sewn Found Photos

April 22, 2013 3:54 AM

Sewn Found Photos "Sometimes there are inscriptions on the back (“Susie, 7 years old”) but more often they come to me stripped of all identity. I sit in my studio and speculate about the nature of the photographed people’s lives. I will, of course, never know the truth, so I feel it is my job to give them new lives and rescue them from the obscurity they would be headed for were it not for me, humble servant of the arts. I try to invent an altogether different identity for them but of course, in the final analysis these works are more about me than any of the hundreds of anonymous individuals who appear in my work." More from Lisa Kokin.
posted by HuronBob (10 comments total)

Interesting pieces. I especially dug the one with the cut-up group sports photo. It's like each of those lives has been reduced to just the fragment of the person visible.
posted by hamandcheese at 4:26 AM on April 22, 2013

not THAT humble ;-)
posted by Jonesisdying at 5:39 AM on April 22, 2013 [2 favorites]

Love it.
(request - one done like a 70s knit beer can hat)
posted by Bighappyfunhouse at 6:10 AM on April 22, 2013

"70s knit beer can hat"

Oh sheesh... I had forgotten about those... I owned one, it was made of Busch Beer cans.
posted by HuronBob at 6:21 AM on April 22, 2013

The thread tails had my fingers inching towards the scissors...
posted by JujuB at 6:22 AM on April 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

Very cool stuff. It'd be interesting to see what the artist would build out of photos of her loved ones. In fact, there isn't much reason why one couldn't do that with one's own photos...hmmm...
posted by xingcat at 8:29 AM on April 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

I like these-- less precious than I would have imagined from the artists statement. I like how the treatment can create works that read (to me) as light and airy, and ones that read darker. Cool!
posted by travertina at 8:47 AM on April 22, 2013

Some of these pieces are really lovely. All of them are interesting. Thanks for posting this. As a person who sews, the delicate touch needed to make something like Constellation makes my brain itch a little.
posted by Brody's chum at 9:25 AM on April 22, 2013

I collect vintage photos. Sometimes I think I am a replicant. I make up stories and little one line plots, like, "Even though they found 7 bodies in her basement they refused to hang her." Or, "No one ever referred to Emily as the pretty one." Basically what I wish was written on the back of the photo. Someday I plan to create a blog where I post the images and the stories.
posted by cjorgensen at 12:15 PM on April 22, 2013

This is absolutely beautiful. It reminds me a lot of the work of Faith Ringgold and her painted story quilts. It's really interesting to me to see how people take the same item -- a portrait -- and treat it in different ways and different mediums. So many individual treatments!
posted by gloraelin at 3:51 AM on April 23, 2013