MEAN GIRLS

Revisiting Anna Gaskell’s 1990s photography in the new age of kinderhorror

As someone whose close friends since childhood have mostly been women I’ve long benefited from making those bonds outside of the norm. But I’ve also learned where things get complex, and where our shared experiences stop and remain beyond me. I think most acutely of those nonverbal moments of communication that happen between two women. When a shoulder touch or a silent look can convey everything from “Yes you should go for him” to “Trish is upset in the next room and we’re needed. I know she brought it on herself, she always does. I’m not defending her but we should be there for her.”

All in a millisecond glance. (And I hope Trish is okay.)

This shared mind is a good survival skill, but it might also come from a deeper place, where group identity is made by rituals and murmuration. Anna Gaskell’s staged, cinematic photos of girls in various costumes and tableaus capture those rituals, both fairy tale-ish and nightmarish. The images in her 2001 monograph can sometimes seem like a queer subversion of the Lewis Carroll–gaze. Other times they’re as feral as Cronenberg’s brood, revolting against the conformity imposed by puberty and uniforms.¹     

Gaskell’s girls are often playing games of some kind and games are how typical children learn and recreate society’s violent sorting. Who’s inside or outside the group? Who has value or not? The artist had to make these images and that compulsion comes through.

Gaskell continues to exhibit, though her recent work is less frenzied compared to this collection, which by my memory was culturally radical even at the time. The early Bush era was a numb haze of monochrome clothes and Muzak electronica. It was far from our current era of kinderhorror, where expressing anxiety and abjection is not just in the open but encouraged as healthy.  

Maybe herein lies the path to Gaskell’s pop culture rediscovery. Just imagine M3GAN or Abigail² flipping through this monograph and feeling seen by this past.

1. You see can more of Gaskell’s work on her Guggenheim page.

2. Abigail is a good movie!