Anna Gaskell
untitled #25 (override), 1997. Chromogenic print, edition 5/5, 19 7/8 x 15 1/2 inches (49.5 x 39.7 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Gift, Dakis Joannou 98.4649
As Patricia Holland says in her chapter, ‘Sweet it is to scan…‘: Personal photographs and popular photography, “Fiction and fantasy have long been more attrative than the mudananities of everday life” (129). Even so it seems that fiction and fantasy have often played the role of not only escape but of catharsis, reflection, and introspection. This photograph understood in that way, with its obvious allusions to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, explore the anxieties, confusion, and often self-contradictory nature of childhood, particularly in growth both physically and spiritually. The white stockings of trinity-ed Alice and the vibrance of the greenery may serve as a symbol of innocence, vitality, and life. The fact that they/she are/is on the ground and getting a bit dirty as well as one missing a shoe, the decay of that innocence. Also there are the two on the ground while there is one standing, trapping them beneath her – “a potent metaphor for the anxiety and confusion experienced by children on the verge of adolescence” (1).
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