Barbara Kruger Analysis

Barbara Kruger is a artist and not a photographer however, I found her unique style inspirational.

Kruger was born in Newark, New jersey in 1945, since then she has gathered a huge design background. She attended Syracuse University, The School Of Visual Arts and Design and studied with Diane Arbus at Parsons School of Design in New York.

 

Kruger's style is very unique and adopts the DADA movement style of using found resources and producing something new. Kruger takes found photographs and personalizes them by adding a red border and white lettering on top which are filled with quotes to add to each image. Much of her text questions the viewer personally about feminism, classism, consumerism and individual antimony and desire.
Her work however could be seen as contradictory as the black and white photographs she uses normally come from mainstream magazines that portray the issues she is addressing.
Kruger's work has appeared in a variety of places from exhibitions in museums and galleries to very much public places like bus cards, billboards, posters and train station platforms.

Kruger's use of personal pronouns such as 'You' or 'We' addresses the reader directly and makes them feel as thought she is talking to them which I think is very effective if your trying to get a message across.

This idea was used in Russian and English propaganda posters, they used personal pronouns in a more aggressive way to try and pressure men to join the army. A very famous example of this is this poster below.

 

 

 

 

Three aspects that make this poster successful are 1 the staring eyes which seem to follow the reader no matter where they stand to view it. 2 the pointing hand pointing directly outward at whoever may be reading it and 3 the personal pronouns 'your' and 'you' which involves the reader with the poster.

 

I really like the picture behind this print because of the technical elements involved IE solarisation. However the words Kruger has chosen to place on this image don't really seem to illustrate her point well if she wanted this meaning to be effective I think she should of chosen a image with either a woman bleeding or a woman pasting a lot of makeup to show the things our bodies go through.

 

However I think that this print is a great example of hers because the image underneath supports her quote very well. The woman in this picture holds a looking glass that enlarges her eye which conveys that she needs the looking glass to see things which the eye cant. So by adding this quote it enhances the meaning of the photograph behind it. This print also feels like she is exploiting advertising posters that are sexist towards women in the 50's displaying them as housewives.

 

A lot of Kruger's images do relate to her added quotes I just think at first glance it isn't quite clear.

However Barbara Kruger's style is something I want to adopt into my work but instead of using found images I will use images from my final depression photo shoot.

I will place text on my images using newspapers and magazines instead of etching onto a plate and printing this like Kruger did.

I will use quotes from the NHS website on Depression and also story's and catchphrases from people who have dealt with it. I'm using Kruger as inspiration but I don't want to use her techniques materials directly as then it would just be a sort of dedication piece to her which is not what I want to portray.

I want to use Kruger's style to raise awareness and offer facts that inform people about depression and that also challenge some common stereotypes about it