This image is from the Jennifer Greenburg's ongoing series, Revising History. Greenburg worked as a documentarian before losing faith in the form. She is currently on a teaching sabbatical, so anticipate the rollout of new works in coming months. Her latest work, "Sometimes the Director knocked twice. 2017," was completed in the final days of 2017.
To create the Revising History works, Greenburg replaces existing figures in found vernaculars with images of herself. The series began as a play with mid-century ideals; it has since turned darker and more critical. Recent works like I've never been good at handling unwarranted attention. 2015, depict a male encroaching the personal space of a female colleague. I've always preferred my own birthday. 2013, gives a visual punch and connect to the disillusionment of motherhood. The images are unflattering without the title-line. Others, such as The insurance agent told me to have my husband or my father call him. 2017 and the new Sometimes the Director knocked twice, 2018, use language to shape our understanding of the image. As a whole, the series turns populous images back towards the audience and asks us to reassess our understanding, not just what they depict, but what they idealize.
In 2016 Greenburg said of her work:
I intend for this series to engage the audience in a conversation about the way we interpret the media, record personal memories, and establish collective history… [this] is a study on photography, the nature of the vernacular image, and its role in creating cultural allegories. Many of the images I am now working with are neither celebratory nor comfortable. Viewers may be unsettled by scenarios they imagine... I seek the disturbing images as much as the seemingly idyllic ones. By (re)processing a cross-section of the past I am creating a dialogue about the constructs still entrapped in our national psyche.