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Main Street, Pie Town

After Russell Lee American
2010
Not on view
In 1940, at the tail end of the Depression, Russell Lee, a photographer working for the Farm Security Administration, documented a small community of homesteaders in Pie Town, New Mexico. Seventy years later, Grossman appropriated and reworked these images to fashion an alternative Pie Town—one inhabited exclusively by women. Using Adobe Photoshop software (which she considers her primary medium), she altered the features of men to make them appear more effeminate, modified the placement and body language of pairs of women to suggest a sense of intimacy, and erased some male figures altogether. Just as Lee’s original photographs offered an idealized view of Western agrarian life, Grossman’s imaginative revision is intended as a lighthearted form of propaganda—a utopian fantasy in which gender roles are fluid and the traditional idea of family is redefined.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Main Street, Pie Town
  • Artist: Debbie Grossman (American, born 1977)
  • Artist: After Russell Lee (American, 1903–1986)
  • Date: 2010
  • Medium: Inkjet print
  • Dimensions: Image: 26.7 x 35.6 cm (10 1/2 x 14 in.)
    Sheet: 33 x 48.3 cm (13 x 19 in.)
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Purchase, Charina Foundation Inc. Gift, 2011
  • Object Number: 2011.423.13
  • Rights and Reproduction: © Debbie Grossman
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

More Artwork

More Artwork
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Pie Town, New Mexico. A Community Settled by About 200 Migrant Texas and Oklahoma Farmers who Filed Homestead Claims. Scene on a Homesteader's Farm., Debbie Grossman American, Inkjet print
Pie Town, New Mexico. A Community Settled by About 200 Migrant Texas and Oklahoma Farmers who Filed Homestead Claims. Scene on a Homesteader's Farm.
Debbie Grossman
Russell Lee
2010
Swing your Partner Squaredance, Debbie Grossman American, Inkjet print
Swing your Partner Squaredance
Debbie Grossman
Russell Lee
2010
Picture of Jean Norris' Old farm in Oklahoma, Hanging in the Norris Living Room, Debbie Grossman American, Inkjet print
Picture of Jean Norris' Old farm in Oklahoma, Hanging in the Norris Living Room
Debbie Grossman
Russell Lee
2010
Doris Caudill, Debbie Grossman American, Inkjet print
Doris Caudill
Debbie Grossman
Russell Lee
2009
Couple at Community Meeting, Debbie Grossman American, Inkjet print
Couple at Community Meeting
Debbie Grossman
Russell Lee
2009

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