Behind the image: “Expectations” / “Shades of Night Descending”

Project Summary

The images in ‘31 explore social and political parallels between the present and the late 1920s and 1930s.

The project’s limited-edition archival pigment prints measure 28 x 42 cm (11 x 16.5 inches).

caption to “Expectations” /“Shades of Night Descending”

“Expectations” / “Shades of Night Descending” is based on the momentum gained by women’s rights movements after World War I. These movements argued for women’s sexual freedom, right to vote, and ability to work in traditionally male professions. Opponents claimed this encouraged morally destructive elements that eroded a nation’s prosperity.

When the 1930s brought economic hardship, these regressive forces blamed liberal democracy. Women were advised to marry and bear children because it was said to be socially more useful; they were labeled selfish for taking men’s jobs. Today’s social climate strongly resembles that time. Individual rights and personal freedom are blamed for unrest and the soaring cost of living, making gender roles again the subject of charged discussions and political conflict. In some nations the result has been the establishment of an illiberal democracy in which people are forced into narrowly defined life paths. Do they represent a future in which all must give up freedoms in exchange for an illusory security?

The Title

Although this photograph might reminded some viewers of more recent artworks, such as painter Edward Hopper’s Cape Cod Morning (1950) or photographer Julia Fullerton-Batten’s Looking Out From Within (2020), the image was inspired by Salvador Dali’s 1931 painting called Shades of Night Descending. Along with a shared color palette and the surrealistic portrayal of the subject, the two images have a disquieting atmosphere in common.

While the human figure in Dali’s painting is on the verge of being engulfed by shadow, the protagonist in the photograph stands in front of a mountain lake in fiery light. In both works, it feels as if the main character is standing on the brink of an abyss.

Women’s Place

In investigating women’s roles and place in society, I aimed to contrast modern and traditional views. While traditional ideas are represented by the image’s setting, an old farmhouse, modern views are embodied by the figure of the “businesswoman” wearing a man’s attire, as well as the car parked beside the house. It is unclear if the woman is coming or going, or if the vehicle is hers at all. This uncertainty is reinforced by having the doors ajar, indicating a certain haste. Meanwhile, the protagonist is holding a magazine and gazing fixedly into the night. 

The traditional location and the figure’s masculine dress evoke external circumstances that might be forcing women to make decisions they wouldn’t be comfortable with in different settings. 

The interior seen through the window has an office-like quality, but instead of computers, desk lamps, documents, and so forth, viewers see six white eggs at the lower right of the large window the figure stands behind. The eggs are traditional symbols of childbearing and fertility, of course, but the fact that there are a half-dozen of them changes the viewer’s reading of them from a natural, organic shape into a commodity from a commercial supplier. This unsettling feeling is strengthened by the precise line formed by the eggs. 

The six eggs also make reference to Hitler’s speech to the National Socialist Women’s Organisation on 11th September 1936. In this address , the Nazi leader described his vision of women’s role in German society: 

“I am often told: You want to push women out of all professions. I just want to give her the widest possible opportunity to get married and to be able to help found a family of her own and to be able to have children, because then, and this is my conviction, she will naturally benefit our people the most.

“Because that is clear, and you must understand this from me:

“If I have a female lawyer in front of me today, and she can still do so much, and next door a mother with five, six, seven children, and all the children are quite healthy and have been well brought up by her, then I would like to say, from the eternal point of view of the eternal value of our people, the woman who can have children and who now has had them, and who has now brought them up and who has given our people life into the future again, has achieved more. She did more! She helps to avoid the death of our people.”

Eggs, Eggs and More Eggs