©Christa Blackwood 2025

This week we explore works made by female-identifying lens-based artists who explore issues affecting contemporary women.  I’ve approached the projects this week thinking about these questions: How is this point in time different for female artists?  What issues need to be addressed in our current climate? 

Christa Blackwood’s series, “My History of Men” is a project that focuses on gender roles, and the inequity of power in representation.  Blackwood has worked on this series for over a decade, and she has explored these themes through a series of nude men, photographed and posed in a similar way to time-honored photographs of nude women made by male photographers in many photo history books.  She has also toned or marbled many of the black and white prints with pink, creating a reversal of the male gaze and to question gender roles.  Blackwood used Benadryl to tone the prints, and as she said, “Benadryl has a temporary sleep-inducing quality to it, which seems apt for the surreal retrograde haze that we find ourselves living in now.” Blackwood’s reference to the history of photography, process for creating the images and manipulation of the prints result in works that are unique, contemporary, sensual, and beautiful. 

-Marcy Palmer

©Christa Blackwood 2025

My History of Men

For over a decade, my artistic practice has been rooted in an ongoing exploration of gender, power, and representation. Since 2013, I’ve worked almost exclusively with a core group of male collaborators— Sam, Blake, Morgan, Richard, and Matt—re-imagining the visual language of the photographic figure study.

Our process often begins with a twist: the models themselves select reference images from a vast archive of historical figure photography— images that, more often than not, depict women through the lens of male photographers. This reversal is intentional. We’re engaging with, and subtly subverting, a canon shaped by artists like Weston, Stieglitz, White, Callahan, Newton, Man Ray, Gowan, and Gibson. Their work becomes both inspiration and foil—material for homage, critique, and transformation.

The photographs are created using large-format film cameras, both in studio and on location. The final works span silver gelatin prints, photogravures, and platinum prints on vellum. Many of the silver prints are uniquely toned with Benadryl or layered with marbling and hand- painted interventions—each piece a tactile, alchemical object.

Our collaborative journey has taken us across the American landscape— from the surreal dunes of White Sands, NM, to the sculptural rock formations of Garden of the Gods, CO; from the lush Piney Woods of East Texas to the haunting bayous of Louisiana; from Moab’s red earth to the windswept Texas Gulf Coast, standing in for the iconic dunes of Oceano, CA.

This body of work is as much about reclaiming gaze and agency as it is about beauty, vulnerability, and the shifting terrain of masculinity. It’s a living archive of collaboration, reinterpretation, and resistance.

-Christa Blackwood

©Christa Blackwood 2025

MP: How did this project get started? Do you have a personal story that started this project? You have other related projects, like “A Dot Red” and “Prix West”. Did those projects influence this one?

CB: This series began right after I finished a dot red series in 2013, and just before I started Prix West in 2015. It was heavily influenced by some of the responses to the a dot red series. A dot red was a visual response to the ubiquitous use of the naked female form found historically (and at present) in photography. Instead of a figure, I placed a red dot in the landscape as a marker of sales and commodification in the art world.

There’s such an over-emphasis on, and constant critique of, women’s looks. For example, my daughter was in a teen all-girl band, and they wrote all their own songs. They produced 2 EPs and opened for bands like Arcade Fire and The Bangles, yet most of the online commentary about the band was centered exclusively on their appearance. The dialogue did not focus on the fact that they were accomplished and hardworking musicians. When I would examine the comments of male teen bands, that wasn’t the case. This prompted me to consider the possibility of a role reversal, flipping the gender dynamic.

I have experienced many instances of sexism in the photo world. I’ve encountered numerous older male instructors hitting on their predominately female students. One instructor told several of their female students that they have to “lose their clothes” for a particular assignment. I have also seen, and participated in, figure study photographic workshops in which the only nude models are young women. A male body was never considered.

The utter predominance of the older male photographer/younger nude female model imagery often makes me question why that was always the standard. Georgia O’Keefe and Tina Modotti are renowned artists and photographers. They are also famous for being the muses/models of Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston. Why are there no nudes of Stieglitz or Weston, taken by O’Keefe and Modotti?

©Christa Blackwood 2025

MP: The process of having your collaborators/models look at figurative images from the canon of photo history and choose references for your collaborative work is significant. Can you talk about that a bit more?

CB: Yes, I have a collection of books focused on figure studies, and I would encourage my models to peruse these books. These publications included Edward Weston’s Book of Nudes (2007); Nude Photographs, 1850-1980 (1980; edited by Constance Sullivan); Georgia O’Keefe: A Portrait (by Alfred Stieglitz), published in 1978; Eleanor (1984; by Harry Callahan and edited by Anne Kennedy and Nicholas Callaway); Edward Weston and Harry Callahan’s He, She, It (2013); Helmut Newton: Big Nudes (2004, by Karl Lagerfeld and Helmut Newton); and Lee Friedlander: Nudes (1991) and others.

Significantly, I was also interested in the model’s engagement with these images, and this collaborative process led to lively discussions between us in the studio. Another component of this creative partnership was the way that models often found or suggested locations for our work. They selected specific beaches on the Texas coast, rivers in the Texas Hill Country, mountain passes and lakes in Colorado, and hauntingly beautiful bayous in Louisiana.

This period was also marked by my frequent visits to The Harry Ransom Center, when I lived in Austin. I would study their collection of photographic nudes, including works by George Platt Lynes, Lee Friedlander, Lord Mountbatten’s erotic collection of nudes and others. This research at the Center, and this engaged process of looking at, and/or reading images, was particularly exciting for me as I continued to refine this series, pictorially and conceptually.

©Christa Blackwood 2025

MP: You’ve worked with the same collaborators for over ten years. How has time changed your relationships and work?

CB: Yes, we began working in Austin for the Boys of Collodion series in 2013. Now, in 2025, we are all spread throughout the country. I moved back to New York City in the summer of 2021.

Fortunately for me, Morgan had moved to NYC a couple of months before me, and Blake arrived a couple of months after. Richard is based in Colorado now. I also teach photography part time at Colorado College. We have had photo shoots in Colorado, NYC, and in Louisiana for the past few years.

When we first began working together, they were still in high school. I felt somewhat nervous and awkward about shooting them shirtless for the topless Boys of Collodion portraits. I am extremely camera-shy, and I’m sure that they initially experienced a great sense of unease coming from me in the early stages of our interaction. Thankfully, our working relationship has evolved considerably, and when we meet these days, it feels like a mini-family reunion. I’m still a bit awkward, as always, but the workflow is definitely much more relaxed and harmonious.

©Christa Blackwood 2025

MP: This project has evolved with tactile or hand applied interventions to the photograph. How did that come about?

CB: I am often impulsive and impatient at times. Often, the standard rules and practices of traditional photography seem stifling or limiting, so I find great pleasure and a sense of freedom and discovery when I add these embellishments. Color is so seductive. I love playing with the images and adding these unexpected elements to the work.

©Christa Blackwood 2025

MP: The project is overtly about reclaiming what has historically been the male gaze in photography and shifting it, but it’s also about vulnerability, beauty, masculinity, and agency. How do you see these themes in our current climate?

CB: It’s worrisome to see these ideas threatened and censored. My work has been censored at times. For example, it has been removed from websites and been given advisory messages for viewers. Also, I’ve been told by a few gallerists that they loved my work. Yet, when I tell them about the concept behind the work and that the images are of young men, their response changes. They let me know that their client base wouldn’t be interested.

In a separate conversation, Christa discussed how her work is sometimes embraced and other times censored in spaces where the female nude is shown.  This inequity of perspective can be difficult and is an important aspect to the work.

MP: What’s next?

CB: I’m really excited about exhibiting my work in a two-person show with Tara Boggart at Hawthorne Contemporary this fall. I have been making larger prints, and continue to experiment with toning, solarizing, marbling and printing in reversal.

©Christa Blackwood 2025

©Christa Blackwood 2025

©Christa Blackwood 2025

©Christa Blackwood 2025

©Christa Blackwood 2025

©Christa Blackwood 2025

Christa Blackwood is a photo, text and installation artist working with themes related to identity, history, and popular culture. Raised in Oklahoma City and New Orleans, Blackwood now lives and works in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She received a Master of Arts from New York University and Bachelor’s degree in Classics and Filmmaking from The University of Oklahoma. She has exhibited her work since the early 1990’s, most notably at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Ogden Museum, The Houston Center for Photography, The Institute of Fine Arts NYU, San Francisco City Hall and the Contemporary Austin. Her work has been featured in many publications, including The New York Times, The Chicago Sun Times, The Village Voice, Lenscratch and Art Desk Magazine. Blackwood founded and managed The Children’s Photographic Collective, offering free low-cost photo and literacy workshops to elementary through high school students in New York City and Austin, Texas from 1995-2007.

https://www.christablackwood.com/

https://www.hawthorncontemporary.com/

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Marcy Palmer is an American artist whose work explores themes of beauty, history, and social justice through the lens of nature and science. Influenced by the earliest practitioners of photography, as well as the Surrealist and Bauhaus movements, Palmer delicately balances contemporary and historical approaches to image-making and materials to communicate her ideas.

Marcy earned her M.F.A. in Photography & Related Media from the School of Visual Arts and a B.S. in Studio Art from Skidmore College.  Her work has been exhibited at The Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Center for Photographic Art, The Griffin Museum of Photography, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and other spaces. Her work has been written about in The Boston Globe Sunday edition, D Magazine, and other publications. Her sold-out book, “You Are Eternity, You Are the Mirror” was published by Yoffy Press and recognized by Photo-eye, Deep Red Press, and The Luupe as a favorite photobook. Marcy also teaches photography at universities, art centers, and museums.