by Ellen von Unwerth
Double Trouble, New York, 2008
Artist: Ellen von Unwerth
Shot in New York in 2008, this archival pigment print catches two women bent backwards over a black balcony railing, heads hanging upside down, legs kicked skyward in patent heels, their full-skirted dresses in blue gingham and candy pink tipping over against a spring streetscape of bare branches and a red-brick facade. Von Unwerth freezes the pose at its most absurd and gravity-defying, faces grinning upside down through their own hair. The whole picture runs on colour, motion and cheek.
Read as fine art, the picture is about play and misrule, two figures literally turning propriety on its head, the demure gingham-and-pink styling colliding with a pose that refuses to behave. The theme is exuberance, girlhood pushed to gleeful excess, the pair entirely complicit in their own upending rather than arranged for the viewer. Von Unwerth’s signature is exactly this comic energy, glamour tipped into slapstick while her subjects stay in on the joke. The work suits a bright, characterful interior that can carry its width, and speaks to collectors drawn to fashion photography’s crossover into fine art. Ellen von Unwerth’s photographs are issued as limited editions, each print part of a controlled run.
Sizes & Editions
50.8 × 61 cm (20 × 24 in), Archival Pigment Print, edition of 15
71.1 × 101.6 cm (28 × 40 in), Archival Pigment Print, edition of 7
Size: medium
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