I first discovered Los Angeles-based photographer Jo Ann Callis when I went to the Getty Center a few months ago and saw Woman Twirling, an exhibition of her photographs that were taken during the '70s, '80s and '90s.One of my favorite pieces on display was titled Performance, and featured a woman in a black dress doing a handstand, her dress slipping down just a tad.
The image is part of a series of photographs Callis took during the 1980s, during which she posed people dressed in ordinary clothes in highly theatrical settings (hence the luxurious, gold curtains and spotlight) and asked them to perform sideshow tricks and such. Callis's intent was to create a "kind of metaphor for life."
Here Callis describes the piece:
"I wanted to allude to a person being constantly required to perform in life and to have the stage-fright fear that accompanies what we imagine are the high expectations of others. How one appears to the outside world may be different from what one feels internally."
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