Natalie Krick

Natalie Krick (born 1986 in Portland, Oregon) graduated from Columbia College Chicago with her MFA in photography this year. She received her BFA in photography from School of Visual Arts in 2008.  She has been published in many online sources such as Lenscratch, Conscientious, and FlakPhoto. 

To find out more about Natalie, visit her website: http://nataliekrick.com/index.html

Ashley Kauschinger: In your series, Natural Deceptions, you are drawn to the idea of beauty and sexuality in its complex forms. What drew you to place these ideas on the face and body of your mother? How does that relationship function in the shooting process?

Natalie Krick: I was photographing a variety of women when I first started to create work that was influenced by my conflicting attraction and apprehension to images of female beauty and sexuality.  I have always been attracted to glamor, cosmetics and the act of creating a façade. I find the superficial to be revealing and complicated. I am also very intrigued by the way that the body is sexualized through imagery. All bodies are inherently sexual but women especially are made to appear more sexual through the way they are dressed, posed or made up.  In some ways, women are sexualized through clichés and artifice.  I started photographing my mother because she was available and I felt comfortable asking her to do certain things. I began steadily photographing her because I was drawn to her age and the way our relationship shaped how the photographs were read. The fact that she is my mother might provoke more questions than it answers but I like the idea that I am photographing the woman that one day I might become.

AK: Your mother often looks like a completely different person from image to image. Sometimes she looks coy, confident, masculine, and feminine. She somehow has the ability to portray a full scope of personas. Is this something that has been consciously done? Do you plan the ideas of sexuality that will be explored within the series?

NK: The poses, styling and way that my mother performs are planned. Usually I have a certain pose or a particular shade of nail polish or an outfit in mind but other aspects unfolds while we make pictures together. I am interested in how the “dress up” quality of the pictures can be interpreted as her trying on and constructing different facades and appearances but I also think that something darker can be read in the images. I think at a certain point an unstable identity might start to read as an unstable psychology.

AK: What are some of your influences? How do you feel you fit into contemporary art?

NK: Recently I have been watching Pedro Almodovar’s films.  I love his campy and unnerving exaggerated constructions of femininity. I love Diane Arbus. I am constantly fascinated and influenced by popular culture. As for the art world, I am more concerned with being aware of contemporary art and culture. I am trying to find my niche. I am interested in complicating the common binary that women are either empowered by their sexuality or victimized by it, which I find to be a contemporary feminist viewpoint.

AK: What is your process of self-promotion? How do you create a balance between making work and creating it?

NK: To be honest, I’m pretty new to the process of self-promotion. I’ve been sending my work out to different blogs and entering juried shows. I am hesitant about many juried shows and I think it is important to be selective.  Making photographs, working my day job and promoting myself is quite a balancing act but I have managed so far by obsessively making to do lists.

Thank you Natalie for sharing your powerful work.