My Pie Town reworks and re-imagines a body of images originally photographed by Russell Lee for the United States Farm Security Administration in 1940. Using Photoshop to modify Lee's pictures, I have created an imaginary, parallel world - a Pie Town populated exclusively by women. "Because the images of Lee's time in Pie Town are available in high resolution form from the Library of Congress, I was able to get close to Lee's images on a pixel level. For me, working with photographs and editing them so closely in Photoshop is a kind of an intimate act (...) I've begun to think of Photoshop itself as my medium - I'm fascinated by the fact that it shares qualities with both photography and drawing. This work creates something that reads as a photograph, and is infinitely reproducible like a photograph, but at the same time depends heavily upon the intervention of my hand."
My Pie Town is currently on exhibition at (the amazing) Julie Saul Gallery, NY until May 21st.
debbiegrossman.com
