Anonymous Women. By Patty Carroll.

Patty Carroll is a photographer based in Chicago, known for her "highly intense, saturated" colour photographs for decades. Her impressive project "Anonymous Women" is a series (heads, reconstructed, demise, draped) that addresses "women and their complicated relationships with domesticity". Carroll turns situations into hide-and-seek between the viewer and the Anonymous Woman by camouflaging the latter (via).

Series "Heads":
"This intial series of Anonymous Women began when husband and I moved to London for a few years, and I was having a very hard time adjusting to British society. As a photographer and educator I use my maiden name, but in England no one knew me professionally and I was addressed as Mrs. Jones. It made me acutely aware that in more traditional societies, most women are still seen through the lens of their domestic status. It was a situation that led to a small identity crisis. My response was to begin a series of photographs depicting a female model whose identity was hidden behind various domestic objects. These were ‘unportraits’ – about being unseen. This anonymous woman represented the situation in which very many women find themselves." Patty Carroll

Series "Demise":

"I construct narrative, still-life photographs that are imagined interior rooms engulfing the lone figure of a woman. Home is a metaphor for the internal life of women; their worries, desires and interior dialogue. The “stage”sets are full size, using household furniture and objects that combine reality with fictional possibilities. As we have been confined to our homes during the pandemic, the overwhelming experience of being “at home” has new meaning and importance for almost everyone. Home is not only a place for comfort and safety, but the central locus of work and play, and where psychodramas of life are experienced." Patty Carroll

Series "Draped": link

Series "Reconstructed": link

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photographs by Patty Carroll via and via and via and via and via