Cass Bird: Rewilding

by Cass Bird, Sally Singer (Text), J. Jack Halberstam (Text)

Over the past ten years, Cass Bird (born 1974) has established herself as one of the foremost portraitists of contemporary America. Her photographs of young women and men casually draw attention to the fluid expression of gender roles and androgyny in today's youth culture, and to what she has described as "the convergence of alternative lifestyles with accepted conceptions of motherhood, nurturing and family." In the summers of 2009 and 2010, Bird traveled to Sassafrass, Tennessee, with a group of young women, a wardrobe of diaphanous dresses and a camera. These women--studio assistants, friends, or women cast from the streets of New York--had been selected by Bird for their ease with their sexual identities, but also for their relative awkwardness in front of the lens. The result was Rewilding, a joyous portrait of modern femininity and a frolicking celebration of women's camaraderie.

Genres: Photography

88 pages, Hardcover

First published February 29, 2012

Reviews

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some decent photographs prefaced by some navel-gazey introductions that talk more about what the photographs could be than what they actually are sometimes. In particular, the writing by Halberstam contains some weirdly gender essentialist statements and is just really heavy with jargon to a point that felt unnecessary. Referencing a lot of queer theorists on its own does not make a work important or good!

I don't think wildness is actually evoked here at all. It reads as city girls gone camping, rather than people actually being more embedded in wilderness/wildness.

I could just be a bit disappointed because the cover made it look interesting.

[Emma F. Payne · Rating 3 out of 5]

The artistry captured inside these photographs are simply, raw. They open up questions and conversations having to do with sexuality, gender-expression, and overall vulnerability, especially in society today.

[Ellison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Collection of B/W and color photos of models of unknown gender in various stages of undress.