Aline Smithson

In considering the creation of work for this initiative, I thought a lot about the layers of trauma and abuse women absorb and hide in order to move through the world. Women never feel completely safe, we suffer through verbal, physical, and emotional assaults  on a daily basis. We carry the burden of contraception, pregnancy, mothering, and many times, the full responsibility of raising a family, while working full time jobs. I thought about the underlying rage that women keep hidden.

I also thought about my own past. I have had two abortions. Both were decisions that I have never regretted. I know how fortunate I was to live in a time when my decisions wouldn’t be questioned, and I had full bodily autonomy. Though the procedure brought me a sense of relief, the experience was still traumatic and something I will always carry with me. For this project, I have selected photographs of women from different eras, added a red filter that speaks to rage, and sliced them open to reveal a page from the document of Roe vs Wade to exemplify an idea of what we carry with us, hidden from the sight.

Bio

Aline Smithson is a visual artist, editor, and educator based in Los Angeles, California. Best known for her conceptual portraiture and a practice that uses humor and pathos to explore the performative potential of photography. Growing up in the shadow of Hollywood, her work is influenced by the elevated unreal. She received a BA in Art from the University of California at Santa Barbara and was accepted into the College of Creative Studies, studying under artists such as William Wegman, Allen Rupersburg, and Charles Garabedian. After a career as a New York Fashion Editor working alongside some the greats of fashion photography, Smithson returned to Los Angeles and her own artistic practice. She has exhibited widely including over 40 solo shows at institutions such as the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Tagomago Gallery in Barcelona and Paris among others. In addition, her work is held in a number of public collections and her photographs have been featured in numerous publications including The New York Times and The New Yorker.

Smithson is the Founder and Editor- in-Chief of Lenscratch, a daily journal on photography. She has been an educator at the Los Angeles Center of Photography since 2001 and her teaching spans the globe. Her books are in the collections of the Getty Museum, the Los Angeles Contemporary Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art, among others. In 2022, she was honored to be a Hasselblad Heroine. With the exception of her cell phone, she only shoots film.