Scott Andrea.K. "An Artist’s Meditation on Color Reveals a Secret History of Film". The New Yorker. 30 APR. 2017. Web.

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“Rose�Gold,”�(still)�2017.SARA CWYNAR, COURTESY FOXY PRODUCTION

hy does harvest gold connote “sad old appliance” but rose gold say“sexy new iPhone”? That’s one question posed in the centerpiece

of Sara Cwynar’s at Foxy Production, a seven-minute flm collage, with voice-over, whose subjects include, but aren’tlimited to: consumerism, obsolescence, sexism, melamine dinnerware,brightly plumed parrots, and, for reasons that I’ve yet to grok, the U.S.Bureau of Reclamation. The tone of Cwynar’s movie mimics mid-

PHOTO BOOTH

AN ARTIST’S MEDITATION ON COLORREVEALS A SECRET HISTORY OF FILM

By Andrea K. Scott April 30, 2017

captivating new show

twentieth-century educational flms—if they had been peppered withquotes from Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty—but none of the footage isfound. Cwynar shot it herself, on 16-mm. stock, not digital video—acrucial detail, given that one of her central subjects is flm itself. (Theexceptions to the rule are the scenes in which Cwynar appears onscreen,a pretty blond woman identifable by her telltale earrings, a tiny gold “S”and “C,” which were shot by somebody else.)  Cwynar belongs to thesame lineage of camera-minded conceptualists as , whoflmed the production of Kodak’s last rolls of 16-mm. flm on obsoletestock, and , whose beautiful, if recondite, picturesmake hay of commercial photo-studio conventions.

Above all, Cwynar’s flm, which is titled “Rose Gold,” is a meditation oncolor. Cwynar is intimately acquainted with the vagaries of palettes: priorto earning her M.F.A. in photography at Yale, the Vancouver-born artistworked as a graphic designer, notably for the Times�Magazine. (Fulldisclosure: The�New�Yorker commissioned Cwynar to take thephotographs for our 2015 Fiction Issue.)  As her gimlet-eyed show, whichalso includes three series of photographs, makes vividly clear, color is acultural construct. Consider an old box of crayons: in 1961, Crayolaretired “fesh” and replaced it with the less Caucasian-centric “peach.” Asabsorbing as her short movie is, the strongest part of Cwynar’s exhibitionis a group of still pictures that pull back the veil on an obscure episode inthe history of color flm as it relates to capturing skin tones.

“Tracy�(Pantyhose),”2017SARA CWYNAR, COURTESY FOXY PRODUCTION

The six pictures in question are portraits of the artist’s friend, Tracy, abeautiful young woman of Asian heritage, who poses in pink, red, andyellow outfts against backdrops of deep blue and green, wearingexpressions that range from side-eyed disinterest to direct-at-the-lens

Tacita Dean

Christopher Williams

gaze. In four of the pictures, Tracy’s image is partially hidden byarrangements of found snapshots, clippings from dictionaries, andnostalgic objects—an empty ring box, perfume bottles, women’s nylons ina jumble of hues.  The last detail is a clue to the secret history that’shinted at more directly in two other pictures, in which Tracy loungesagainst giant colorful grids, in lieu of cloth backdrops. They suggest theCMYK standard (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) used in “matchprints,” which insure that the colors in a reproduced photograph arecorrect before it goes to press.

But from the mid-nineteen-ffties to the early seventies, Kodak suppliedcommercial photographers who bought its flm with so-called Shirleycards, images of women—always Caucasian—that were printed on cardstock and used as the standard for lighting in studios. (Apocrypha has itthat that the frst woman whose image was used on the cards was aKodak employee named Shirley.) The protocol was eventually updated toinclude black, Latina, and Asian models—but not for the samereasons that made Crayola retire its “fesh” crayon.  Rather, it wascomplaints from furniture manufacturers, frustrated that blond and darkwoods were indistinguishable in advertisements, as well as from thecandy industry, irate that milk- and dark-chocolate bars looked just thesame. (For a deep dive into the subject, consult the

of the Canadian scholar Lorna Roth.) In her portraits of Tracy,Cwynar performs a sly bit of color correction herself.

Colour BalanceProject

“Flower,”�2017.SARA CWYNAR, COURTESY FOXY PRODUCTION

Sara�Cwynar’s�exhibition�“Rose�Gold”�is�on�view�at�Foxy�Productionthrough�May�14th.

Andrea�K.�Scott�is�the�art�editor�of�Goings�On�About�Town�andhas�profiled�the�artists�Cory�Arcangel�and�Sarah�Sze�for�themagazine. More