Defamiliarizing the female figure with Mary Claire Griffin
Washed out pink tile borders the bare flesh of a crouched body, balanced precariously on the corners of a porcelain bathtub. A thick head of hair shakes in a deranged motion, such that each strand is suspended in the air at a uniquely obscure angle. With arms tightly bound around each calf, the body forms a trapezoidal structure to bear the uncontrollable motion of its head. The fingers flex following the delicate arches of the feet, perched on toes painted with a dark red polish. Each piece of the body intertwines with another to form a figure that feels distant from reality, yet close to humanity.
This is the provocative work of Mary Claire Griffin, a Chicago-based self-portrait photographer who I met at The Other Art Fair. As I strolled around the venue in Downtown Brooklyn, each artist’s cubicle was tightly packed with abstract whimsicality and passion. When I saw Mary Claire’s work from down the aisle, the contorted bodies in her images gripped me by the shoulders and seemed to pull my body into theirs. As I weaved through the crowd my eyes attempted to follow the contortions of the limbs on a faceless body. These images were not for my eyes alone, yet I felt an uncomfortable closeness to them. The bodies in the portraits revealed themselves to me through the natural patterns of their environment, provoking a sense of intimacy.
As I started to feel my surroundings slip away, I looked to my right and saw Griffin standing with her hands clasped in front of her. We shared a brief moment of eye contact, and as she took an inconspicuous step closer to me I quickly realized she was the artist. After gushing in admiration, I began to ask her about her work. My amazement grew when she told me her pursuit of self-photography began in just March 2023. What started as a creative experiment around her house expanded to photoshoots in hotels and homes around the US.
“I’m always looking for patterns,” Griffin said “I frame the shot first, and then I find a way to insert myself.”
Griffin uses natural patterns to create a sense of mimicry, as the body becomes a subject that simultaneously blends in with and sticks out of its environment. Through her use of color, texture, and symmetry, Griffin’s body encompasses the world around it. The female body is a subject of dispersed attention, which provides a sense of release from the constant pressure being perceived.
Griffin discussed how she uses the practice of yoga to explore new shapes to create with her body in photos. When she started to film her yoga practice, Griffin explained it felt unusual to watch the external appearance of a process she felt so familiar with on a mental and spiritual level. She expressed that the sight of her body in conventionally unflattering, yet deeply natural positions has led her to become more comfortable with herself and her surroundings. Defamiliarizing herself from her body has the power to reveal a new perspective of the world around her. But this process of self-exploration is intentionally unapparent in her images.
“I use my body as a prop to try and depersonalize it– instead of being about me, it's about the female experience,” Griffin explained.
Griffin achieves this depersonalization through the introspective nature of her work. Although her identity is hidden, her process of defamiliarization manifests in the experience of looking at the image.
“I use a lot of angles and tricks to make it feel like something is not quite right… where there is nothing exactly wrong with it, but it gives you a kind of feeling.”
She flips the mental exercise onto the viewer through the transformation of familiar body parts into unrecognizable figures.
This experience of unease can be traced back to Sigmund Freud’s concept of unheimliche, or the “uncanny”, which explores the fear of becoming estranged to the familiar. The uncanny captures the unsettling nature of human resemblance in a space that feels disconnected from reality, and provokes introspective and existential questioning– an experience Griffin reflects with her self-portraits.
The obscurity of Griffin’s work expands past the “uncanny” and provokes a feeling of simultaneous discomfort and intimacy. Griffin’s images are understood in parts rather than as a whole, which subsequently breaks down the visual presentation of the female body.
We are forced to question their notion of a feminine figure– if the body itself is difficult to recognize in the image, why do we so quickly identify it as one of a woman?
Griffin’s portraits do not include features that typically constitute a “feminine” figure– there are no poised postures or hourglass silhouettes. The images rather capture the most innate aspects of femininity through attention to oneself in a moment of solitude. A moment when the looming fear of being perceived slips away, and she becomes one with the space around her.
In this image, Griffin’s body folds over itself such that her bare hands and feet lay flat on the ground. When she takes a long breath, her spine hunches further, and her rib cage expands to form an undulating pattern on her skin. The knobs of her spine poke out of her back like pyramidal peaks of a jagged mountain range. With her head out of view, her body becomes a collection of angles and symmetry. The silhouette of the pose isn’t classified as a “feminine” one, but it conveys a crucial sense of grounding. Her chest and stomach cave to meet her thighs, and her knees and elbows bend into each other to form shields that perfectly protect the most delicate parts of her body.
Her figure is embodied by the world around her, but is not defined by it. The notion of femininity feels distant from reality at some moments, yet intimately human at others. Femininity is the exploration of strange and familiar pieces that encompass womanhood. At this moment, her figure is inherently feminine.
