by Rachel Perlis

The real value of a sexually attractive woman in a world which regards good looks as a commodity depends on the degree to which she puts her looks to work for her.

I first met Kim Fairchild in early 2000 during an opening of an exhibit of her portrait photographs at a gallery in Washington, D.C. Her show was unusual for the usually conservative if not stuffy capital city. Instead of portraits of famous and powerful political leaders shaking hands or signing documents, Fairchild's photographs were portraits of someone hardly anyone had ever heard of: herself.

Fairchild is that rare individual: beautiful inside and outside and completely lacking in pretension, artistic or otherwise. I confess I had an immediate attraction to this person.

There is an entrenched school of criticism that insists consumers, critics and opinion-makers must separate the work of art from the artist. Fairchild, in the relentless pursuit of her own image, presents a problem for the followers of that school of thought.

Some of the photographs that I saw during the opening are here in this online exhibit. This work is representative of Fairchild's work: the photographs are black and white and the subject matter is the artist's own image, frequently naked. Despite her boldness with the camera Fairchild is a relatively shy individual, especially in a group. She tends to be more expansive, however, when having a one-on-one discussion.

When asked what made her decide to be a photographer she tells an amusing story about the time she was photographed with her top off by the boy next door. She was eight, he was nine. The boy's mother came running outside screaming. She scolded her young son and sent the bewildered Fairchild home. Fairchild's mother explained that people like to look at each other. It was nothing to be upset about. Fairchild says that after that event she became fascinated (obsessed?) with looking at herself. From the age of 16 on she took daily self-portraits, usually with a Polaroid camera an aunt had given her as a gift. Fairchild estimates that she has taken nearly 8,000 pictures of herself.

Many of the daily self-portrait pictures are stored in a series of photo-albums which were on display at the gallery. These albums or picture-books are organized in typical diachronic fashion with various notes, dates and comments scribbled in the borders and on the backs of the photographs. Fairchild has created essentially a photographic transcript of her life beginning when she was a teenager and continuing as she approaches 33 years of age.

One is immediately struck by the absence of the normal content of such photo-albums: there are no pictures of parents or siblings. There are no pictures of birthday parties or graduations. The only constant content is the photographer herself. And usually the content is very minimal. What is seen is picture after picture of one individual, usually close-up and frequently naked.

Does this approach to creative self-expression verge on solipsism? Is Fairchild's work itself a precise metaphor for the rampant narcissism social critics have been talking about for the last two decades? Fairchild's intense and intimate self-examination seems to reflect the prevailing cultural obsession with image, surface, superficiality. Critics claim that this attention to the surface comes at the expense of substance. Notions of "beauty" are now truly only skin deep. And the eye of the beholder is idealized which allows for rampant relativity masquerading as diversity. Which is why it is strange to hear the artist talk in terms of absolutes, especially when she opines on the moral and ethical importance of what she is doing.

The ethical implication of self-expression is her theme. What do we expect of our artists in a culture whose karma is based on commerce and gain? Commerce and gain, Fairchild points out, require teamwork and rather rigid codes of behavior. The business world is, after all, merely a substitute for the reality of war. The artist in this environment either joins or disengages. The better artists seem to become conscientious objectors. If mindless teamwork is part of the ethos then it is not surprising to observe artists like Fairchild who are obsessively individualistic.

In this context Kim Fairchild's photographs are subversive in the extreme.

Enjoy.


New York, N.Y.
January, 2001

RACHEL PERLIS is the photography editor of Telephotoscope Magazine. She is also the curator of the photography exhibit SUPERFACIAL REALITIES at the Museum of Post-Modern Art in New York.