Summer Group Show: "Dress Up"

While gallerists and curators are in Europe or at the beach, I thought I'd try my hand at curating an on-line summer group show. "Dress Up" is an examination of how children's personalities and personas are transformed by what they wear. (OK, "Dress Up" is actually just an excuse to show some photographers whose work I love.) Enjoy.



Michal Chelbin photographs professional performing children in their costumes, often highlighting the disparity between their glamorous on-stage persona and the reality of their itinerant lives. I especially love "Alicia in the Golden Dress," (top image) which shows a beautiful elegant girl in trashy surroundings.

Jeongmee Yoon's Pink and Blue Project (above and below) shows children in their own bedrooms, surrounded by their gender-defining clothes and toys.



Montreal artists Carlos and Jason Sanchez have a creepy-pedophile riff going on in several of their photos, but "The Hurried Child" is a stand-out, with its allusion to Jon Benet Ramsay.

Amy Stein's fabulous "Halloween in Harlem" series shows the world of make-believe in a city where children trick-or-treat by daylight. (That's the worst part of growing up in Manhattan, in my opinion. Taking the elevator to a fluorescent-lit hallway to trick-or-treat just doesn't have the same magic as running around in the leafy, dark suburbs.)

Angelika Rinnhofer (right) dresses "ordinary" people in the garb of Renaissance nobles, a meditation on the way we (even today) use clothing to convey status.

To round out this group show, I'd also include vintage images like Diane Arbus's "Child in Blackface," Mary Ellen Mark's circus photographs, and Helen Levitt's wonderful images of the make-believe world of childhood.

With all the recent brouhaha about photography shows being closed down for showing images of nude children, it's nice to know that, until censors come to their senses, there are still plenty of wonderful images of children fully clothed.