Self-Portrait
/Jenny Bagert
2007
American, b. 1972
Silver gelatin print
Gift of Robert and Malena Puterbaugh
Polk Museum of Art Permanent Collection 2018.1
Although a self-portrait of the artist, this photograph almost demands a narrative. The image supplies the viewer with an overabundance of signs and signifiers, clues that enable each of us to imagine our own tales about who this woman is (although the artist poses for the work, in your story you get to determine if your “character” is Bagert or not). Why does she sit on the wooden floor? What can we see as we look out into the world just beyond the sun-drenched space of the room? How does the figure’s mirror reflection in juxtaposition to her silhouetted form in the foreground impact our reading of her or the story we want to tell about her?