Following a series I did on San Francisco’s Drag Kings, women dressed as men, I produced a series of photographs in which I appeared, in imitation of classic Hollywood photographs of male movie stars. This playful series of black and white images was not meant to represent the male movie stars themselves, but to clearly read as me posing in imitation of the timeless icons. As the Movie Star series was rolling along, I considered issues and theories of gender representation and semiotics.
When the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, I found I could no longer work at such a light-hearted pursuit. My partner and I were at the top of the World Trade Center on September 5th, and flew out of Newark, New Jersey, direct to San Francisco, on September 9th, 2001, on the same United Airlines flight that was high-jacked and crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. Horrified and frozen, I was swept up in the media frenzy that followed. When I was finally able to return to my photography studio, I produced a series of self-portraits that address blind self-destruction, and join my previously cheerful repertoire celebrating human representation in photographic portraiture.
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Chloe Atkins was born in Reno, Nevada, raised in Quincy, California, a small town in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and lived her entire life in Northern California. Her education consists of a Bachelor’s degree in ceramics, and a Master’s degree in photography. She began photographing in earnest in the later 1970′s. Her work has been exhibited across the United States, is in some major collections, and has appeared in publications around the world, including a monograph, “Atkins: Girls’ Night Out,” St. Martin’s Press 1998. In addition to creating her own art in various media, Chloe is an event producer, program developer and freelance curator in San Francisco.
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