Courtesy Elizabeth Moran
Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind
"Since August 2017, I have been working with archivists at TIME Inc. researching the history of fact-checking as a profession. The position was created by TIME’s founders in 1923, and as the first weekly news magazine in the United States, TIME served as an aggregator, culling stories from over 300 newspapers. TIME’s reporting was advertised as “written after the most thorough and exhaustive scrutiny of news-sources.” However this “exhaustive scrutiny” was considered women’s work from its inception.
The photographs, sculptures, and carbonless prints included in this first exhibition of Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind have two points of departure: early fact-checking manuals; and advertisements for TIME from the publication’s first year in existence. These advertisements often relied on nonsensical metaphors—"Catch 100 baseballs with a seven-bushel crab net"—and always used the male pronoun—“He cut the Gordian Knot”—to describe the female fact-checkers' work. The works in the show address both this absurdism and the role of women in the development of a profession that is more important now than ever."
Opening exhibition:
Friday, April 6, 6–8 pm
Cuchifritos Gallery
120 Essex Street, New York, NY 10002
On view through April 22, 2018
Hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 12–6 pm
Forthcoming talk at the Whitney
Elizabeth will be giving a talk at the Whitney Museum in conjunction with the exhibition Zoe Leonard: Survey. The discussion will highlight the conceptual decisions that confront a photographer at the various junctures in the process of making a photograph.
Insider Focus
Monday, April 16, 7–8 pm
Whitney Museum of American Art
Floor 3, Susan and John Hess Family Gallery and Theater
99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY 10014
Forthcoming residency at the Visual Studies Workshop
In the Fall of 2018, Elizabeth will be in-residence at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY to continue work on the next phase of research for Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind.