NATURAL DECEPTIONS
NATURAL DECEPTIONS
CREDITS
Fuelled by her mixed feelings for pop culture, Seattle-based photographer Natalie Krick (b. 1986) makes photographs that mimic and reference cliché images of sexuality and beauty. Starting from the belief that what is considered beautiful and flattering needs to be examined, Krick photographs herself and her mother’s body in a stylized way, playing with beauty, playing with performance, and also, playing for each other. She explains: “In the harsh revealing light of the flash; we pose, we masquerade until our unstable identities begin to merge. We impersonate each other and ourselves, emulating imagery that has taught us how to be beautiful.”
The colourful pictures, portraits and fragmented photographs expose an awkwardness and tension in being looked at and scrutinized while also displaying a longing to be seen as desirable and beautiful. By creating images that can be perceived as simultaneously garish and seductive, Krick questions the beauty that’s commonly found in magazines – artificial, flawed, threatening, psychological – and satirises the ideals of beauty
