Natsha Caruana

my initial critique for review 

Elizabeth Chandler
University Of Salford
BA(HONS) Photography - Level 5
International Markets And Contexts
Review/critique and reasoning behind my selection of Natasha Caruana

Born in 1983 Caruana is a practicing artist, lecturer of photography and founding director of the London based studioSTRIKE artists studios. She graduated from an MA in photography at the Royal College of Art in 2008 and is currently a lecturer of Photography at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, Surrey.
Caruana’s own art practice is grounded in research, drawing from archives, the Internet and personal narratives. Her series ‘The Other Woman’ and ‘Married Man’ documents love and life of the everyday. Caruana’s works have been exhibited in various group shows, such as Invisible Adversaries, alongside Francesco Goya and John Constable and The Fool at the Northern Gallery of Contemporary of Art, Sunderland. Previous group and solo exhibitions have been in The United States, Poland, Germany and Saudi Arabia. Her work is held in the collections of the British Library, Woman’s Library in the UK and the Laguna Art Museum and The Kinsey Institute in the United States.
Her work was shortlisted for the National Magazine Awards in 2007 and the Deutsche Bank Pyramid prize in 2008. In 2010 Caruana was named as the one to watch in the Royal Photographic Society Journal, featured in the British Journal of Photography and selected by the Humble Arts Foundation as one of 18 leading female art photographers working in the UK.
In Natasha Caruana’s projects I feel a strong sense of a woman scorned by love an betrayal. Her three main projects available to us are titled;
‘Portraits of the other women’
‘Married men’
Fairytale for sale’
A photographer not afraid to use her camera to confront difficult subjects, her projects present an immense suggestion of love, trust, loneliness and betrayal. On one level her work can be seen as a typology of adulterers, but that only scratches the surface. Deeper meanings to be discovered in her work expose a complex investigation into the boundaries of trust, deception and betrayal. The perfect endless cycle. For as long as there are air in peoples lungs, there will be the un-defeatable human desire to love, trust, hate, and then start all over again. For some the cycle may not take it’s full course, for others it will. Many times over. Human emotion is the epitome of a true endless cycle and it exists in each and everyone of us, it is human nature to self destruct and repair, constantly striving to find something which sparks a new feeling or one that is simply superior to the previous experience of a given emotion.
Caruana’s work is created combining found images, snapshots and staged pictures. Her projects come together to compromise four bodies of work all dealing with similar issues.
"For me the medium isn't important. I select how to produce my work on a project-by-project basis. But I do enjoy pushing myself into new territory - such as the found images, or working with audio - I work best when I'm feeling uncomfortable and challenged."

The work is challenging, both from a content point of view and some of the methods used to obtain the material. There are questions of an ethical nature surrounding much of her work, however I think this contributes to my love of her work.

Fairytale for Sale consists of a collection of photographs taken from online adverts of brides wearing now redundant wedding dresses. The faces of the brides have been scratched out or obscured, and the dresses, symbols of an idealised view of western life, are reduced to commodities. Each one is on sale, though the reasons why vary, from divorce to a simple desire to de-clutter.

Natasha said: "The women were eager to sell their dress to me, and through an exchange of emails I was able to obtain the photographs, along with the reasons why they were selling their dress. These answers I use as a text installation alongside a collection of photographs, and their words go someway to explain why they have obscured their faces in such bizarre ways."

The Other Woman is a more conventional photographic project and was made back in 2005. The pictures portray women who have experienced affairs with married men and was inspired by a personal experience.
"The work was made in 2005, before I realised the power of the internet as a research tool. I placed adverts in Time Out, local classified newspaper sections and shop windows.
"I didn't need to persuade the 'other women' to pose for me. The shoots were created through collaboration between the subject and myself, and we discussed the location and pose beforehand. Some shoots were 30 minutes and others were shot over two days, it depended on the subject."
With the knowledge of Natasha Caruana’s background and stories of her having become ‘the other woman’, you could read the work as a lashing out from a woman betrayed. Or assume the project to be a personal healing outlet. When reading an interview with Natasha online I came across the following statement which juxtaposes such ideas;
“I didn't use it to move on. But through the course of the project I did end up doing so. I was interested in how I suddenly was given a label and wanted to explore how other women felt. Every story is different but society uses the same wording - mistress, bunny boiler, home wrecker etc."
Her other series ‘The Maried Men’ is the photographic part of her work which depict some of the 80 dates Natasha went on with married men, each one organised through dating websites. The identities of the men are not revealed, and the photographs captured clandestinely. This uses a different photographic technique, adhering to the snapshot aesthetic. The images are often matched to audio recorded surreptitiously during the dates. The work questions the motives of the men, but more interestingly for me, it also questions Caruanas motives. In the series The Marrried Men, there are unanswerable questions of morals. The man is cheating on their partner, and Natasha is Cheating them. Do the two wrongs cancel each other out? Another interesting layer of the endless cycle.
"On the dates I used a fake name but I would say I was a photographer, and my getting out a disposable camera each time became my alibi as they thought I was a harmless amateur. I was only able to take one or two shots per date so they didn't ever get suspicious. Yet on one date in Soho a man did get suspicious and asked me if I was an undercover reporter. This was one of my last dates so I suppose I was a bit on autopilot by then, and maybe didn't seem that genuine anymore."
I find her work is both challenging and engaging, though i have no doubt some people will feel it crossed the boundaries of what is acceptable. From what I can gather through reading of countless interviews with Natasha, this is an ethical issue that was not disregarded.
"I spent a long time considering what to do with the hours of audio material, I tried different edits... but I never felt comfortable in the power I had to manipulate the material to get a particular response from the viewer. In the end I realised I wanted to use the audio (although yes, ethically immoral), and I just used the parting 30 seconds of us saying goodbye. I used this material as it was, unedited and un-tampered.”
As previously touched upon. There are questions of an ethical nature surrounding this work. In an interview online I found an interesting statement from the artist herself where she explains her justifications for the projects public viewing.
"I also justify the work by considering that the men are cheating on their wives, and I'm cheating on them. So who is in the wrong? Yes two wrongs don't make a right, but I hope the work opens a unique conversation in the viewer's mind, given their personal experience, ethics or morals."