This is the work done by Julie Cockburn, she takes neglected photographs found at car boot sales, studio shots from 1950's movie stars and pages from american high school yearbooks. Through embroidery, cutting and collaging she makes these found images her own, creating a link between the past and present day. The portraits that Cockburn selects are photographs that were once amazing for their era, however now serve no great purpose and can been seen as being defunct. I choose to look at this photograph titled 'Tattoo Face' because I love its vintage aesthetic and qualities. I don't think that the embroidery defaces the photograph, but instead helps it. As it covers majority of the woman's face and helps to bring out her features which are her eyebrows, eyes and her statement red lips.
To me her work strikes me as having something to do with memory. Being that her work is hand crafted leads me to believe that our memories are all very personal. Most of her significant pieces of work are of women which intensifies both the manipulative and hand crafted nature of the work she produces. Another meaning behind her work could be that we are all just upgrades of our past. She takes images of the past and defaces them to fit in to present day, which is what in some aspects we do. It is all a constant cycle, what is seen as 'cool' now will be seen as rubbish in 10-20 years.
Cockburn's technique to go about making the work is defacement. These both driven by her desire to blemish and/or embellish the photographs. She often embroiders or cuts out shapes into a quite complex patterns, this is very long tedious labor of work which just makes me enjoy and appreciate the photographs more. By manipulating the portrait Cockburn seems to create a barrier between the viewer and the photograph, this may help the viewer keep an open mind when viewing the photograph as they don't have any emotional attachment to them. The colour all the vivid, it's also muted in tone which is to be expected for the era in which the image was taken. The colours are soft and pastel-like which keep a nice light heart-ted image.
I choose to look at this image because I enjoy the nature of being able to manipulate a photograph and creating something totally new. It brings back some form of life, and takes something with little or no meaning and makes it to a very visually appealing photograph. Julie Cockburn's work reminds of the artist John Baldessari although he uses more block objects to cover the face and making the image less personal they still share the common theme of defacing photographs. Cockburn has inspired me very much, in knowing that although something is dated there is no reason why you can not 'rescue' it and bring back to present day, with something so simple as cutting into it.
" I feel have a right to them, that they are mine for the taking, or rescuing even"- Julie Cockburn
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