Larissa Fassler’s Teen Couples I and Teen Couples II and Karen Brett’s The Myth of Sexual Loss call into question our conjectures about youth, the elderly, and sexuality to surprising effect. Upon viewing these photos, which complement each other beautifully, we find ourselves forced to let go of some of our notions of who more suitably represents sexual energy. Rather than recycling images from our collective imagination, Fassler and Brett reposition sexuality and desire as natural development in the process of aging. It is not necessarily the purview of the young, with taut skin and glowing complexions, but the rightful landscape of the elderly, which includes wrinkles and liver spots. Fassler helps the teens break out of the Calvin Klein notion of youth sexuality while Brett reestablishes the elderly as sexual beings.
Essay by Claudia B. Manley in PDF below
Karen Brett graduated with honours in Documentary Photography at the University of Wales, and completed a Master’s degree in Photography at the London College of Communication. Using both still and moving images, Brett explores issues related to mental health, domestic violence, and intimacy in middle age. Brett has had numerous commissions including a touring exhibition with Lilly ICOS to promote the sexual rights of older people as well as Memory Palette, a commissioned work co-ordinated by NESA—North East Somerset Arts. Her work has received numerous awards and she has exhibited nationally and internationally. The Myth of Sexual Loss is currently touring Ffotogallery, based in Penarth, Wales. Brett has been published in several journals and is featured in the spring issue of Locus Suspectus. Brett currently lectures in Bristol and Wales.
Larissa Fassler was born in Vancouver. She completed her MA in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths College at the University of London after completing her BFA at Concordia University in 1999. Her work traverses performance-based photography, video, text and built objects. Using the public as both subject and audience, her work staged events and focuses on the complexities of human relationships and emotions in everyday life. Fassler has exhibited widely, including solo shows at Truck Gallery, Articule, YYZ Artists Outlet, Western Front, and La Centrale, and group exhibitions at West Germany in Berlin, Sparwasser HQ in Berlin, Three-Walls Gallery in Chicago, The Kasseler Documentarfilm- & Videofest in Kassel, Germany and the Limerick City Gallery of Art in Limerick, Ireland. Larissa Fassler currently lives and works in Berlin.
