Leigh Ledare Personal Commissions, 2022
Specifications
10 Dry Prints on Hahnemühle paper 310 g in their portfolio
Each print 100 x 70 cm
Printed by Cultura
Portfolio produced by Cultura
Production
Edition of 10 copies and 2 artist's proofs
Certificate numbered and signed by the artist
2008/2022
Produced and published by mfc-michèle didier in 2022
©2008/2022 Leigh Ledare and mfc-michèle didier
NB: All rights reserved. No part of this edition may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the artist and the publisher.
For Personal Commissions, Ledare answered classified ads in the "Women Seeking Men" section of the New York newspaper The Village Voice.
By protecting the anonymity of its readers, the newspaper allows people to call on "services" - determined according to age, physical attractiveness or availability - in exchange for financial compensation.
Ledare contacted these women and offered to pay each subject her asking fee, adding one caveat. Instead of sleeping with "him", "she" would photograph him inside their flats, with the freedom to show him as she wished, standing; sitting or lying down; clothed or unclothed; erect or not. At the end of the session, the whole will be shown to the spectator who will become de facto voyeur of a revealed intimacy. It also indirectly reveals these women by highlighting their ambitions, values and self-proclaimed desires in relation to their personal domestic spaces.
The resulting compositions are, however, in the classical tradition of the nude in art, evoking odalisques or lascivious representations traditionally attributed to the female gender, but here reinterpreted by a man - the artist/model - according to the indications of the women who contracted with the artist.
Each of the ten prints associates the texts of the classified ads with each of the photographs produced.
18.11 x 13.78 x 2.76 in ( 46,9 x 35,8 x 7 cm )
18.11 x 13.78 x 3.94 in ( 46,9 x 35,8 x 10 cm )
Edition of 5
Edition of 5
10.63 x 7.87 x 0.79 in ( 27,5 x 20,5 x 2,5 cm )
Edition X
12 x 8.27 x 1 in ( 30.48 x 21,5 x 2.54 cm )
Exemplaire N° 87 / 126
14 × 5.25 inches (folded), 28 × 21 inches (unfolded)
Exemplaire N° 98 /100
6.3 x 9.06 in ( 16,5 x 23 cm )
Exemplaire N° 0