Anna Ream, Sisters Wisdom

Artist: Anna Ream

Title: Sisters Wisdom

Medium: archival pigment print

Unframed Dimensions: 14 x 20 inches

Framed Dimensions: 15 x 21 x 2 inches

Price: $700

Artist Statement:  My photographic practice shaped my feminist awakening, pushing me to think critically about the gender norms I inherited from my Mormon upbringing, and to develop a voice to respond to them. Sisters Wisdom belongs to my series MormonBSads, in which I appropriate the visual language of Mormonads, advertisements for teenagers published in Church magazines since the early 1970s. The BS stands for benevolent sexism: the subtle, often well-intentioned ways patriarchal systems constrain women under the guise of protection and reverence. I pair quotes drawn from general authorities' talks with images from my archive or newly staged photographs, making visible the subtext I internalized and am now unraveling. Through its pink and red palette, the piece honors Dialogue's 1971 Pink Issue and 1981 Red Issue, the journal's first two devoted to women's issues, and through its boldness, the 60 years Dialogue has spent giving Mormon women a platform to name their experiences of gender within the LDS tradition.

Artist Bio: Anna Ream is a fine art photographer and educator based in Issaquah, Washington. Her practice considers how personal identity is shaped by social roles, expectations, and belonging. Working both observationally and through constructed imagery, she explores childhood, adolescence, motherhood, and tradition: territories that shaped her, that she has watched her children move through, and that she now reconsiders through photography. Anna’s work has been featured internationally in exhibitions, on websites such as TODAY.com and The Daily Mail, and published in magazines such as Exponent II. She is a graduate of the certificate program at Photographic Center Northwest, the only accredited freestanding photography school in the country, where she is now a faculty member and Board Trustee.