This work first exhibited in a 2020 exhibition, A Substitute World | Photographs by Jennifer Greenburg. Photographs from this series were culled-back out of 15 years of image-making in a moment of quarantine and isolation- their context is reframed. Works belonging to this series have haunted the artist since the moment they were made – the weight of spaces inspired the uncanny necessity to make the image. The contemporary artist is best known for her Revising History series, an interdisciplinary practice that results in a photograph but involves elaborate methods of construction. A Stubstitue World works by contrast are indulgent and capture subjects with undeniable beauty. The moment has added context that reframes these works and the conventional underpinnings of normative visual dialect.

Greenburg cannot help remarking that society and mainstream art history desire and canonize women who expose themselves intimately and explicitly before the camera (interior/nude/family/relationships/peep show). This feels more dangerous, invasive, and permanent to Greenburg than wandering down the proverbial lonely alley at night. Hers are a play on the sort of images either a male artist in her footsteps has or could be celebrated for or that otherwise speak back to societal “supposed not to-s.” This photograph was made at night while traveling alone.