Susan Bozic is stuck at the border, on her way from Vancouver
to Seattle, where she’ll catch a flight the next day to Aspen.
But Bozic’s not going to ski the slopes among stars and celebrities.
(After all, it’s the first week of July.) An exhibition of her work,
The Dating Portfolio, is on at an Aspen gallery. It’s also
showing here, at Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery.
Her trip inverts the jet-setting, glamourous life in the same way as
the 15 images in The Dating Portfolio, which depicts Carl’s
wooing and wowing of a character known as Carl’s Girlfriend (a role
assumed in the photographs by Bozic, who changes clothes, not costumes
or characters a la Cindy Sherman). The series questions the thinking
that “if we have an attractive partner, or if we have certain material
possessions, we’ll be happy automatically,” explains Bozic. “I had to
show the standards: the movie, the cafe, the dinner,” she says. “But I
also had to show things people could identify with but haven’t had the
opportunity to do.”
Carl has means. He’s got the private plane, the boat, the place. He
can afford to take his girlfriend to the latest resto. He has styled
hair and a mean set of abs. It’s all there, illustrated in colour,
detail and deliberately, elaborately designed scenes.
“Sometimes we don’t know why we want certain things, or why we’re
influenced by certain things,” says Bozic. “If we look at our desires
and our wants, we should question them. Are they solely from us—do
they originate from us?—or are they influenced by outside
sources?”
That Carl is a mannequin works well in articulating the query, but
not for the reason first thought. The viewer quickly moves past Carl’s
styled and toned vacuity to consider—linger on—Carl’s Girlfriend,
the embodiment of the blissfully unaware (of herself and of her
boyfriend’s plastic persona) partner.
“Women are from an early age read those stories, the
Cinderella stories and the Snow White stories,” says
Bozic. “It tends to be this scenario of this Prince Charming sweeping
them off their feet and the idea of happily ever after.”
With The Dating Portfolio, her work has shifted from black
and white to colour, animal to human taxidermy, so to speak. The
photographer researched online, scrolling through page after page
(hundreds) of mannequin models, to find Carl, the man to make the
fantasy come true.
“There’s an element of luxury because again we’re being sold the
ideal when we’re watching TV or looking at magazines and newspapers.”
There’s no chores, doing dishes, laundry. Carl doesn’t rip a fart or
get drunk and crash on the couch, smothering a slice of pizza.
“Everything is perfect in those images—they’re cleaned up.”
“They’re all labour-intensive, if I could put it that way,” Bozic
says of the photographs. After coming up with the concept, she had to
scout locations, complete test shots, buy and borrow props and clothes
(Vancouver’s movie industry meant supplies were in abundance) and then
do the shoot.
“I had to get a boat. I didn’t own one and didn’t know anyone who
owned one.” That was an example of a time when she had to rely on the
“generosity of strangers.”
Of course, everything could go awry in the next series, the
continuation of The Dating Portfolio, which Bozic is currently
completing. It picks up after the last frame, when Carl asks his
girlfriend to move in with him. Conjuring soap operas or Hollywood
romances, Bozic says, “It’s my version of a cliffhanger.”
This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2009.
