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ARTIST'S STATEMENT
I was born in the Bronx but spent most of my childhood and adolescence in Virginia, where I was
socialized to my regret at an early age about the importance of being thin, pretty, and nice.
Inspired by Duane Michals´s project about his family and early life, The House I Once Called
Home, I´ve constructed a photographic memoir about my problem with overeating that uses text,
family materials, and photographs of myself to present a visual expression of my inner state.
Stations of the Scale is the most honest and painful work I´ve ever done, taking
seven and one-half years to complete. It started with an assignment in a photography class to do a
self-portrait about the most important aspect of oneself, and I made an image about struggling to
button a too-tight dress. Then I moved on to give my background in a family where food had great
importance, where even the dinner table became like a boxing ring with conflicts over how much or
how little one ate. From the time our pediatrician told my mother I was fat and prescribed a diet,
I had a problem with distorted body image and secret eating. My life became a long struggle with
diet after diet, and I experienced supersized helpings of shame and frustration.
Using text and images of myself as a model where my facial expressions channel Zero Mostel,
I´ve tried to take an honest but ironic and wryly humorous approach to my lifelong problem
that makes visual what I feel and experience and goes public with my personal narrative in a way
both specific and universal.
Andrea Rosenthal:
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