Paper cut-out from the book "Portraits of Greatness" from Yousuf Karsh
30.4 x 23.7 cm (unframed)
48.6 x 41.6 x 2.8 cm (framed)


The portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt at the center of this work is taken from the pages of Yousuf Karsh’s 1959 photobook, Portraits of Greatness, which collected formal, black and white studio portraits of some of the most celebrated figures of the 20th century. It forms part of a series of works by Wyn Evans which adapt pages from the book through the eclipse of perfectly circular holes that leave sections of the photographs missing. Adapted in this way, the work becomes less concerned with the figures which inhabit the frame, than with the nature of the images as disseminated in ways that made them symbols of celebrity, intellectual prowess, and personal achievement throughout the last century. In this way, Cerith Wyn Evans interrogates the potentiality offered by the image, in contributing to – and shaping – forms of collective cultural memory.
 
 The original photograph, taken in 1944, is emblematic of a style which became well-recognized though extensive reprinting in books, newspapers, magazines such as Life, as well as in fine art and portrait galleries across the world. Karsh, who researched his subjects heavily before photographing them, sought to capture the allure of their character and depict them in their best light. Some of his photographs have become the most memorable images to endure of figures including Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Tennessee Williams, and Ernest Hemingway.
 
In this photograph, Roosevelt looks beyond the lens, the pencil in her hand a symbol of her achievements as a diplomat, journalist, human rights activist, and the longest serving First Lady in the US. The transmutations made by Wyn Evans disrupt the sense of aura created by Karsh’s use of artificial lighting and centering of his subjects’ upper torso, with the effect of revealing the  flatness of the image as a two-dimensional object. The visible shadows which these punctures make in the frame make clear the layers of fabrication that feed into our perception of these portraits as worth more than the materials from which they are made. The artist’s conceptual approach to these celebrity portraits is elaborated by his decision to disarrange the biographical information which accompanies them. The back of each portrait is supplemented by a short description of a different figure so that each image becomes a set of incongruent set of data, and thereby has its original mystique further obfuscated to the point of appearing without sense. –Elsa Gray