In preparation for this essay I was curious to learn some of the sources of Gaskell's imagination and asked her to list books and films that influenced her work. While looking at the list, I had the sensation of being projected into Gaskell's photograph of little girls searching the mouth of Alice to see what she may have eaten to cause a metamorphosis in her. It was clear that Gaskell had ingested all the titles on her list - books such as Lord of the Flies, Dracula, Frankenstein, Daddy was the Black Dahlia Killer, Turn of the Screw, Dictionary of Imaginary Places, and In Cold Blood; and films such as Sister My Sister, The Bad Seed, Mildred Pierce, All About Eve, Dead Ringers, Village of the Damned, Carrie, Lolita, Fantasia, and The Exorcist. Gaskell's photographs are not specifically about any of these books or films; rather they are all of these stories combined. Young and teenage girls and ingenues, for instance, are the subject of many of the books and films on Gaskell's list and all her photographs. A number of these narratives explore the concept that children are not innocent beings and, when left alone without the guidance and love of adults or the governance of society, they can become savage. Concepts of good and evil do not seem to apply in many of these books and films. Likewise the actions of Gaskell's subjects are often ambiguous. Are the girls who are pushing and pulling another girl helping or hurting her? Is there an underlying sexuality expressed by the girls' mysterious rituals, the role of the pho-tographer, or the gaze of the viewer? Gaskell's interest in young girls as subject matter began in 1996 with a series of photographic portraits she made that were inspired by Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Gaskell was intrigued by the way these late-nineteenth-century painters repeatedly used the same model but had her assume the pose of a different character in each painting. Reversing this practice, Gaskell had different young models pose as the same Alice character. These alluring models seem at once childlike and worldly. It is these girls' ambiguous relationship to Gaskell (and by extension, the viewer), more than their reference to Alice in Wonderland, that connects these portraits with the wonder and override photographs. Stories of dopplegangers and evil twins also dominate Gaskell's list of books and films. The theme of doubles occurs in Alice in Wonderland when the author describes Alice's penchant for pretending to be two people, and in the use of the mirror in Alice Through the Looking Glass. Although Gaskell cast identical twin girls in wonder, the pair appears together in only three photographs such as Untitled #8 in which the girls lie side by side as perfect mirror images and in Untitled #2. In override, the Alice character is represented by five girls whose complicated poses at times transform them into a single monstrous girl with multiple heads and limbs. Gaskell essentially shattered the mirror in this series so as to eliminate the separation between the interior and exterior selves. Viewers experience a similar condition when looking at the override photographs. Gaskell manipulates the compositions so that, like Alice, the viewer can enter through the looking glass. For example, in Untitled #23 Gaskell positioned the little girls dragging Alice through the forest to correspond to her perspective when she photographed the scene, thereby creating the sensation that the disembodied arms belong to Gaskell, and by extension, the viewer who assumes the same perspective when looking at the picture. Although Alice is the protagonist in override as she was in wonder, in this recent series of photographs the Carroll story becomes the arche-type for all the other narratives on Gaskell's list of books and films. With her starched Victorian pinafore, Alice is immediately recogniz-able, and her role is that of youthful siren who lures the viewer into contemplating Gaskell's work. And yet, as recent articles published on the centenary of Lewis Carroll's death bear out, the perception of the author, his real life muse, and the fictional Alice have altered over time. In fact, the current notoriety surrounding the recent screen production of Nabakov's Lolita and the interpretation of Carroll's motivations as bordering on pedophilia intertwine the identity of Alice with that of Lolita in contemporary minds. Gaskell is attracted to the malleable qualities of fiction: narratives hold open multiple possibilities while facts in true life cannot be changed. In her work, Gaskell exercises control over her subjects and can alter a story each time she sets up a scene. Her manipulation of narratives is particularly evident in her film, floater. The title, itself, leads the viewer along a stream of consciousness which connects a detective term for a drown-ing victim and optical floaters (alusive black dots that occasionally drift across ones field of vision), with Hamlet's doomed Ophelia who sees her situation more clearly when she looses her mind. The floating figure in this film is an Ophelia as transcendent as the submerged damsel paint-ed by the Pre-Raphaelite Sir John Everett Millais. Gaskell's film, however, alters the fate of Shakespeare's heroine. Instead of allowing Ophelia to drown herself in despair, Gaskell imbues her with the will to sur-vive. Projected as a continuous loop on the floor, the film presents a beautiful, golden-haired young woman floating face down in the water. The sparkling, reflected light, the rich coloration and the limp floating figure are mesmerizing to watch. Slowly tilting her head back toward the viewer, Ophelia opens her mouth wide to gasp for air. As the camera zooms in on her mouth, the viewer feels pulled into this gigantic maw. Although Gaskell raises the viewer's expectation that Ophelia can be saved, the continuous loop always returns her to her watery grave. Fiction provides an escape into another world. Alice stands out among fictional characters because of her rich imagination and ability to create a new place for herself. Gaskell exercises her own imagination in her photographs and film and feels free to tell and retell stories as she desires. The sense of freedom, however, is limited and even contradicted by her medium. Gaskell may be able to alter the outcome of a story or play, but once she shoots a scene, the image is frozen and the narrative remains as fixed as circumstances in life. Bonnie Clearwater

the above extract from "Anna Gaskell" 1998 courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami

Anna Gaskell gregos Anna Gaskell "override" postmedia