“MY Girl Culture”
Erasure Poetry
By
Emma C. Johnson
2023
Artist’s Statement
2024
I was inspired by photographer Lauren Greenfield’s work, including her 2002 monograph book and art exhibition Girl Culture. Greenfield approaches her photography from an anthropological lens. Her subjects are typically teenaged girls and women in Los Angeles who manage to adapt to societal expectations of women as they navigate acceptance and finding their voice. Greenfield’s themes are often dark, touching on issues of late neoliberal capitalism, consumer culture, anorexia and bulimia, and sex work. Her images show the nexus between women’s bodies and capitalism.
For this erasure poetry project, I was also inspired by poet Katy Didden who used a yogurt container to create poetry. Wanting to use everyday objects to make a statement on their materiality and meaning, I selected women’s cosmetic products, much like the objects that Greenfield captures in her photography and documentaries. I shot pictures of the feminine products and used Photoshop to erase words to create poems from the given text. I matched the colors in Photoshop I used to erase text, but not perfectly, so that the words’ disappearance was sloppy enough that it left its trace but blended in enough to function secondarily to reading the content of the poems.
My goal is to invite the viewer to consider commodities targeted toward women and what these objects can tell us about our society. By creating poetry from the given texts, I take what is given in the world (forces that commodify the female body) and try to subvert it through creativity to push against hegemonic narratives that commodify women.
Erasure poetry
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