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Adobe Airstream Online Magazine
History on Horseback: Edie Winograde Photographs
Online Audio Interview
September 14, 2009
Written by Ellen Berkovitch
ArtReview Magazine, Special Focus on Art Photography, October 2006
"Edie Winograde"
By Jens Hoffmann
In her ongoing series Place and Time,(1999-) New York-based photographer Edie Winograde explores American history through photographs of staged pageants and re-enactments of historical incidents. One of her first groups of photographs centred around a small town in Wyoming where locals dress up as Native Americans and settlers to act out stories from the pioneer era, something they have done there for more than 60 years. Among the other re-enactments Winograde has photographed (most of which are staged at the sites where the past events they commemorate took place) are those that revolve around the journey of Lewis and Clark, the Gold Rush, the famous Battle of the Little Big Horn and the Oregon Trail.
While the re-enactments themselves find their place somewhere between pure entertainment and education, the artist is more interested in the relationship between the past and the present. And, more particularly, how this particular form of representation of the past can provide a potential for the individuals taking part to find their own place in the history of the United States by connecting to a larger collective memory.
At the core of the artist’s investigation is not only the idea that, today, the so-called West is seen as a wild and free fantasy world or the notion that re-enactments are, in effect, a vehicle through which participants escape their present lives, but also a reconsideration of the relationship between the two groups of people that interact in most of the re-enactments she photographs: Native Americans and those who came to those places during the nineteenth century in search of a better life.
Yet, it is not only the protagonists that play a part in her work; Winograde is equally interested in the historical sites and landscapes that have burned themselves into our collective memory. With all these layers of meaning, Winograde’s work ultimately offers a reconsideration of many of the myths and fables that litter the history of the United States and, through that, the potential for an improvement in the country’s often difficult relationship to its past.
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Westword,November 26, 2008
"Myth America: Reimagining History at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center"
by Michael Paglia
(excerpted)
Colorado — and its prominent place in romantic notions about the Old West — has achieved celebrity status. It's one of the reasons we're invaded year-round by armies of scenic paparazzi seeking to hunt down picturesque landscapes and take candid photos of them. It might be an embarrassment to some, but fantasies about cowboys and Indians have as much to do with Colorado's international fame as do the mountains, and the familiar imagery is not only part of the history of Hollywood, but the history of art, too.
It was with this in mind that Blake Milteer, curator of 19th-, 20th- and 21st-century art at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, came up with a pair of marvelous shows that function both individually and in consort: Walt Kuhn: An Imaginary History of the West and Place and Time: Reenactment Pageant Photographs by Edie Winograde.
(excerpted)
Winograde's photos exemplify postmodernism in many ways — too many, in fact, to fully explore. The most obvious is the notion of simulation, with the actors simulating historic figures and acting out simulations of historic events. But Winograde is also simulating her role, playing the part of a documentary photographer but producing non-documentary photos and recording something that is itself unreal. Plus, there's that whole postmodern hermeneutics going on. The re-creation actors are interpreting history based on previous interpretations, including Hollywood treatments of the West, while Winograde is making her own interpretations.
Milteer's pairing of these two bodies of work is brilliant and reveals a young curator who is among the top art-world talents on the Front Range and one of only a handful in the region capable of putting on a great show — or, in this case, two of them.
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Rocky Mountain News
"Artists duel over the West at Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center"
by Mary Voelz Chandler,
Using two bodies of work to build on a conceptual base requires the most delicate of intellectual engineering.
But Blake Milteer, curator of 19th- through 21st-century American art at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, has organized a two-prong exhibition in which the sets of work not only complement each other but, taken together, prompt a thoughtful and expansive view of how we perceive this region.
If the West hadn't accumulated mythology as well as history, if we didn't see the region in disparate ways over the course of time, it would make this place no different from other parts of the country.
To examine the West of our dreams, Milteer first turned to the Fine Arts Center's collection to bring out of storage a suite of early-20th- century paintings by New York- based artist Walt Kuhn. In "Walt Kuhn: An Imaginary History of the West," Milteer showcases a wonderful gift to the center but also offers viewers work that displays figuration as it evolves into the ab- straction of modernism.
Then Milteer looked to pair Kuhn's striking visionary paintings from the early 20th century with something different yet on that same wavelength: late 20th- and early 21st-century photographs of reenactments of pageants in the region by Edie Winograde. Now based in Denver, Winograde also has a vision of the myth/history of the West, as created by those who not only recall it but relive it.
Milteer has a strong background in photography; that was his specialty when he worked in the Denver Art Museum's modern and contemporary department. Here he gives the medium its due by choosing Winograde's perceptive, cleareyed work.
So it's old and new, painting and photography, intensely personal view and detached observation, all coming together in a pair of exhibitions that help put the Fine Arts Center near the top of the pecking order this fall.
Milteer said he'd heard from the community that it wanted to see a sign of the center's commitment to Western art, but he decided to not just haul out a slew of paintings from the collection. The Kuhn suite was a gift from the artist's family a year after his death in 1949 (a long-ago center director had tried unsuccessfully to acquire them).
The 30-odd paintings are all about the artist's concept of the place: One trip to the West fueled Kuhn's beautifully composed, compact scenes with titles straight out of a Hollywood storyboard - Attack on the Stagecoach, Bar Room Fight, Brothel Scene, Commissioners, Indian Raid and such. They are installed simply but elegantly.
The same is true of Winograde's sweeping images, which hang in a nearby gallery. She began shooting these assemblages in 1999 when she learned about the practice of reenacting crucial moments in the region or a specific town.
So an encounter in Lusk, Wyo., soon led her to Lewis and Clark in Whitehall, Mont., Custer's Last Stand and the Battle of the Little Bighorn. What's important to note in these works is not just the action at hand but also the evidence of contemporary life - for example, a camper or a nearby refinery that gives the historic event an unusual context.
Taking into account this thought-provoking partnering, the stunning installation of the bountiful "Designing Women" show and the exhibition of numerous other works retrieved from the collection, new center chief executive officer Sam Gappmayer has curators he can rely on to organize shows that challenge as much as they please.
And that's what all arts institutions should consider as they plan for the future.
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