Miwa Yanagi, Gretel, from the series Fairy Tales, 2004
Miwa Yanagi (Japanese, b. 1967), in her series Fairy Tales, toys with the traditional narratives of folklore both famous and forgotten. Using girls and women for the visual restagings of these stories, Yanagi allows age to act as a platform for altering our perception of events whose realities are already slightly distorted. By drawing out the extremes between young and old, she fosters an illusion of fantasy while portraying a world utterly removed from our own. The tone that is set, throughout the series, reminds us of the eerie and macabre underpinnings of folklore as it passes on from one generation to the next.
Love, love LOVE Yanagi!!! My favorite from this series is “Snow White,” in which the girl is Snow White and the witch all in one, just by putting on a mask. Thanks for sharing these!
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