Untitled, September 2006, 2006

Untitled, September 2006, 2006

Hannah Starkey
Northern Ireland, b. 1971, active England
Dye coupler print, printed 2021
© Hannah Starkey, digital image courtesy of the artist, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York/Los Angeles and Maureen Paley, London

Hannah Starkey makes large-scale photographs of women in public spaces by hiring actors or models to pose for her, then adding props and scouting architectural settings with symbolic resonances. By photographing women in ambiguous narratives—as in this cinematic scene, in which a pregnant woman stands waist-deep in water in front a large expanse of windows—Starkey questions the documentary nature of photography and its representation of gender. She often leaves her photographs untitled but includes the month and year in which the image was completed. While the choice to provide a date gives additional context, the meaning of the image remains open to interpretation.