Julie Cockburn

Cockburn works with found portraits from charity shops, car boot sales, 1950s studio shots of starlets. All the images below come from " Filling the Cracks with Ceiling Wax"/seesaw productions 2010
She manipulates, embellishes and 'spoils' the faces, creating misfits. On some she adds embroidery that looks like henna decoration or Maroi tattoos.

 Manipulated found image

Other faces have been chopped into small shapes and fitted back together in a strange kaleidoscope.

 Manipulated found image

 According to Ellie Harrison-Read (2010 Flowers Gallery)  'Cockburn's mode of attack is defacement... to both blemish(destroy or diminish the perfection of) and embellish(beautify by or as if by ornamentation)' These images have a sad aura to them as once probably cherished and treasured keepsakes of friends or family members that have been discarded  and neglected. Cockburn brings new life to them in the Dadaist tradition of Object Trouve.

Manipulated found image

This image reminds me of the work of LucyandBart It could be commenting on disease or deformity,which are areas I am researching-albeit reluctantly and timidly on occasions!

In all the works, Cockburn has taken a stylised ideal of beauty and correctness-best clothes, best smile and distorted it into something strange and 'ugly' in its imperfection. I am also experimenting with this positive/negative juxtapositioning.

The splicing, breaking up and re-assembling of the portraits feels like an irreverent  invasion which results in an image that is unexpected and unsettling to me. As mentioned earlier, the feeling evoked chimes with the themes I am exploring of attraction and repulsion, beauty and ugliness.
 The manipulation, the photographic graffiti jar on my sensibilities because I see the original, unsullied happy smiling poses of people full of life and hope, attractive, loved, who are all probably dead. Cockburn's work makes me wonder about her subjects-were they happy? did they enjoy their lives? Why were their images discarded?

Cockburn's work is at the forefront in the field of photography as she is taking very traditional staged studio portraits and subverting them to create something new and original.

But art has succeeded if it inspires a reaction in the viewer. Cockburn's work haunts me, so that's good-isn't it?