Laurie Long

Laurie Long is an artist who graduated with a BA in the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1983. and completed a MFA in Photography, at San Francisco State University in 1996. She lives in California and has exhibited widely in America, and in Germany, Belgium, Spain and England. Her work fuses elements of humour, feminism, pop culture and more recently religion, tourism and archaeology. During her career she has worked on a series of lens-based and installation projects. Two particular projects which were focused on in Postcards Home, are described by her below.

Detective work figured prominently in 'Becoming Nancy Drew', a body of work in which I physically transformed myself into the famous girl sleuth from children's literature and placed myself in photographic tableaux based on engravings from the books.

Each Nancy Drew photograph is one part of a triptych that also includes a pinhole photograph from the scene and the caption from the original engraving. The three pieces within each triptych coexist as mysterious, cryptic, and familiar elements that work together to confront and expand the boundaries surrounding memory, identity and personal narrative.

'The Secret History of Goddess Sites' is a photography project that documents sites in Europe where the female deities were worshipped. The goddesses are from a variety of eras and regions including prehistoric goddesses, Isis, Cybele, Ancient Greek and Roman goddesses, and a myriad of local deities.

The sites fall into a number of categories - they range from forgotten ruins to archeological reconstructions. A few are tourist attractions.

Some temples have been reconsecrated to make deities: others have been replaced by churches.

Additionally many sites have been demolished and exist only in archaeological or historical records.

This project illustrates the neglect and destruction of shrines to female deities, and attempts to remove the cloak of anonymity surrounding the sites and the goddesses. The lack of present day information regarding these sacred spaces parallels the selective editing of women's history. The photographs visually reference and parody postcards and include descriptive text about the fate of the site. The images recontextualize each site and address gender issues within the areas of religion, history, tourism, and archaeology.