CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/18/2016

Muse: Mickalene Thomas

"Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe: Les trois femmes noires" (2010) is reproduced from Muse: Mickalene Thomas Photographs. "Could a man have made these images? No, not my images. Men make many images of women that seem distant and detached. I like to think that my love of and attraction to women is represented in my photographs and paintings. I believe that there's a different gaze of woman-on-woman love that is well beyond the notion of exploitation. There is sexuality and all those beautiful things about a woman that turn me on. I have a deep desire and sensuality for women that's inescapable. So perhaps I'm just as guilty as a man for my reasons for wanting to look at, photograph, and paint women. But most of the women that I'm working with are very comfortable with what they're doing, how they want to express themselves. I look at it as a collaboration. I want them to be themselves."