Joyce Tenneson (American, b. 1945) Sleeping Beauty, 1987 Color Polaroid Miami University Art Museum purchase 1990.11
Joyce Tenneson’s Sleeping Beauty is a celebration of the nude
female figure’s time transcending power. She aims to give tangible
form to women’s relationship between self and body. Drawing on
her experience as a fashion photographer, she critiques capitalism’s
predatory nature. Veiled in gossamer, the anonymous figure
represents contradictions in the societal treatment of a woman–her
body and her mind. Symbolic of patriarchal expectations and the
liberation from them, the photograph evokes a Tonalist aesthetic
with its muted palette and mist-laden lighting to blur 19th century
perceptions of the female nude with a Post-Feminist understanding
of modern womanhood.