Link: Stacy Greene.     

“Lipsticks is a series of large-scale photographs of lipsticks near the end of their lives as consumer products, worn away through use.

What first attracted me to the subject was, simply, the mysterious and abstract beauty of the lipsticks of some friends. Though completely unintended, the daily private ritual of applying lipstick had turned these utilitarian and phallic objects into sensual mini-sculptures of bold colors and shapes impossible to duplicate or imagine.

These photographs have multiple connotations. To improve her appearance and sexual attractiveness, each woman molds her lipstick with her hopes and dreams and fears. Each shape simultaneously evokes and bears the imprint of a complex and secret emotional past.

Lipstick is sometimes viewed as yet another tool of sexual manipulation. As an enlarged photographic image on a gallery wall, however, these instruments of gender commercialism are transformed into symbols capable of multiple, even contradictory, interpretations.”

Title Quote: Kathe Kollwitz