Strange Fire

Q&A: Lindsey beal

By Hamidah Glasgow | September 26, 2019

Lindsey Beal is a photo-based artist in Providence, Rhode Island where she teaches at Rhode Island School of Design, Massachusetts College of Art & Design and New Hampshire Institute of Art's MFA program. She has a M.F.A. in Photography from the University of Iowa and a Graduate Certificate in Book Arts at the University of Iowa’s Center for the Book.  

As a photo-based artist, she combines research about historical and contemporary women’s lives with historical photographic processes; often including sculpture, papermaking, and artist books in her work.  Inspired by the ways in which contemporary American society views women, she investigates how women lived in the past, drawing parallels and contrasts between women's lives then and now.  Both through presentation and subject matter, she connects the viewer to the past and how it reflects today’s political and social culture.  She connects her imagery to photographic history, how it was practiced, developed and presented by early photographers. 

Lindsey’s work was featured on the New York Times Lens Blog, Slate France, BBC Mundo, PDN, New Scientist, Lenscratch, feature shoot, Don't Take Pictures, and published in various textbooks and periodicals.  She has shown at national museums, galleries & universities, including solo shows at the Vermont Center for Photography, the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Danforth Art Museum, and the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.  She was a Finalist for Photolucida's Critical Mass Top 200 in 2016 and 2018.

HG: Your work explores the lives of women through a variety of devices, diseases, and other materials. I want to talk about three of your bodies of work : Parturition, Intimate Appliances, and Transmission. What have you learned about the lives of women that has surprised you, shocked you, or delighted you?

LB: I never give much thought to technology but recently, I started to see how it wove a thread throughout my work because it is directly tied to women’s bodies.  Technology affects our everyday lives but also affects safety, health & medicine, sexual pleasure, appearance & fashion, and in providing for ourselves and others.  As always, it is a double-edged sword since it can make our lives easier, freer and more enjoyable or used on, against or by control.  Some of the ways technology used in gynecology, such as the speculum, were developed, were shocking.  Some of the delights were physically handling some of the contemporary birth control methods since it’s not something we often see, let a lone touch.  I anticipate the (slow) gains made in the technology of STI-prevention and contraceptives.

HG: What made the development of the speculum shocking?

LB: Today’s design of the speculum is a modified version that was created by J. Marion Sims.  Sims’ developed his design by repeatedly experimenting on unanesthetized enslaved black women.  This horrific history is finally being addressed by the removal of Sims’ statue in Central Park and acknowledging the problematic history of obstetrics and gynecology (and medicine in general). 

Obstetrical and gynecological history is full of contradictions and complications.  Medical history has been fraught with racism and sexism—tools were often forcibly tested on the poor, the enslaved, and sex workers. Conversely, without these improved tools, many women would have had to deliver unwanted pregnancies or died in childbirth.  On the one hand, male doctors interceded into the female realm of midwifery and delivery; on the other hand, doctors saved the lives of women and infants in delivery.

When I set out to photograph these items in various medical libraries, I expected to find gruesome tools; instead, I often found early forms of implements still in use today such as forceps and speculums.  Some were created pre-germ theory and used materials such as leather, wood, horn or ivory.  Others more closely resemble and use materials familiar to us today. 

By photographing the tools digitally and printing them to replicate twentieth century glass educational slides, I intend to connect historical uses and developments with contemporary tools and practices.  This allows us to examine how women's reproductive health and medicine evolved, yet still remains the same.

HG: After your answer about doctors experimenting on enslaved women, and thinking about how patriarchy informs every aspect of women's lives, how does that patriarchy and racism inform the rest of your work? It's a big but important question.

LB: My work directly references aspects of women’s lives.  I am privileged to make the work that I do and that it is shown.  I think about Virginia Woolfe’s concept of Shakespeare’s sister in “A Room of One’s Own” and how many women and people of color have not had that privilege to express themselves and how exciting our creative culture could be if everyone could participate in it.   I am hopeful that the recent institutional focus on inclusivity and exposure continues and the narrow idea of who is an artist changes.  

HG: I have to admit that several of the pleasure-giving devices in your series, Intimate Appliances, are a mystery to me. Tell me more about those historic devices? How were they viewed back in the day? Was there stigma attached to them?

LB: Vibrators were every day objects sold in mail-order catalogs and department stores.  They were often (and still are) masked as “personal massagers”. Each generation’s technology reflected the vibrator’s power source or material.  They were seen as more of medical implements until they became scandalous in the 1920’s when they were used in pornographic films.  Since then, vibrators slowly became less scandalous.  I recommend reading Rachel P. Maines’ “The Technology of Orgasm” and Hallie Lieberman’s “Buzz” for a more detailed history.

HG: I recently read an article about how a self-pleasuring device for women was excluded for a technology prize until there was a public outcry and then the device was included and won. Have you heard about this?

LB: Yes, the revoking and then re-instating of the tech award for new vibrator, Ose, fits along with the history of technology and women’s bodies.  One, it sounds like it uses state-of-art technology.  Two, this story is a perfect example of the stigmatization of the vibrator and women’s pleasure.  On a positive note, it sounds like with recent funding, the company is moving forward with making it available soon.

HG:  How did you begin working on the Transmissions work? What was the inspiration?

LB: “Transmissions” came directly out of my “Reproduction(s)” series which catalogued various STD prevention and birth control methods by creating high-resolution scans of each item, and then digitally creating a wallpaper pattern with it.  (I recently made this series available in various apparel items where a percentage of all sales goes to a monthly donation to a designated regional Planned Parenthood).  This series got me questioning from what each method was protecting the user.  What did they look like?  Looking at the various STDs as microscopic imagery made available from the Center for Disease Control, the bacterial STDs reminded me of cyanotype.  The staining used to see the infectious diseases were similar to the Prussian blue.  Additionally, cyanotype was often used as a cataloguing device.  This process was used by Anna Atkins, a biologist who many consider to be the first female photographer.  In more firsts, she created what is considered to be the first photo book, by cataloguing her collection of British pond weeds that she sent to other biologists in England.  They are beautiful one-of-a-kind prints.  I love Anna Atkins and wanted to create my own catalogue that tied the staining process and photographic history together. I furthered this in the display by embedding the prints in resin and used the Petri dish as a framing device. 

HG: Thank you for sharing your work. What's next for you as an artist?

LB: I have three on-going projects.  One, I just completed a series of videos, which is a big change for me!  I recreated formulas and used various animal milks that women historically fed their infants.  I then analyzed and recorded them under a microscopic.  They are pretty mesmerizing.  Two, I am in the process of photographing historical breast pumps, nipple shields and infant feeders (baby bottles).  I am visiting various historical medical object libraries to photograph these items.  Lastly, I am also revisiting my “Commonplace” series and creating new imagery and cyanotypes for that.

All images © Lindsey Beal