Cover, copy from FRAC Bretagne, image source: artist

Publisher Note

Women absorbed in their reading, their faces bent over a book and bathed in light, their features reflecting the story contained in the volume consulted. Women pausing to think about what they are reading – staring into space, book still open but put aside. Women devoting themselves to a religious reading. Women indulging in a bourgeois reading, in a light or mischievous reading, in a secret, stolen moment, a savored reading, ballet slippers rocking at the end of their toes. Women sharing their reading, a camaraderie of reading that must be validated by another. Women interrupted, book still in hand, accusing looks answering the viewer's gaze, a sly or mocking smile on their faces. Women from behind and thus an inaccessible reading: hidden faces but half-bare shoulders justifying the impervious pose.
An entire non-verbal typology associated with the postures of women's reading, a gendered act in spite of itself.

"woman reading book" refers to a genre of painting ("the reader"), the three keywords entered into an internet search engine that generated a corpus of more than 3000 images, and finally a series of artist books focusing on the editorialization of these multiple images of reading. Published on newsprint, the final form proposes a new visual sequence of images selected from the corpus. In doing so, the series underlines the redundancy of the postures of both the spectator-reader of the book itself and the images of the “readers" being looked at. These books thus aim to reiterate the performative character of reading and its representation.

Artists’ Edition

woman reading book

— #4

by Julie Morel

Publisher self-published
Release Place Briant, France
Edition 1st edition
Release Date 2020
Credits
Artist: Julie Morel
Printrun 5
Inscription numbered
Original Price 120.00 EUR
Availability Available
Work  
Subform Artists Newspaper
Topics Feminism, Woman Reading
Methods Black And White
Dimensions 38.0 × 29.0 × 0.5 cm
Pages 12
Technique Offset Print