Babies
April 6 – 29, 1989
In “Baby,” I explore the unique facial characteristics of infants under one-year old. Several of the babies are quite young (around five weeks) and have an unformed, not quite human, almost alien quality. Because photographs of such very young babies are rare in the mass media, some parents are initially surprised that their newborn doesn’t resemble the predominant advertising image of a smiling perfectly formed baby. The babies depicted are round with no straight edges and little muscle tone. In many of my photographs both “attractive” and “unattractive” physical characteristics of infants are revealed in a single frame. The viewer, therefore, often is simultaneously attracted and repelled by this imagery.
In addition to exploring the facial features of babies, I also simulate in the viewer two emotions that many parents have when holding their young child. One is feeling overwhelmed and overpowered completely by a baby. This is reinforced by the larger than life-size of the prints. The other emotion aroused in the viewer is the desire to inspect the child’s face in great detail: the smooth skin, patchy hair, lack of teeth and especially the “flaws” such as small scratches, sweat, and saliva.
Many diverse emotions of babies are depicted. Several babies are crying and upset. Others look calm and pensive. One is sleeping.
For this work, I used the 20 x 24-inch Polaroid format. The fine detail, sharpness, lack of grain, vivid color, and large size intensify the imagery.
Gail Rebhan is a Washington, D.C. based photographer and Professor Emerita of Photography at Northern Virginia Community College. She has an M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts and an undergraduate degree from Antioch College.
Integral to her various bodies of work is an interest in time and change. Her works, which often configure photographs and text in series, examine gender, aging, race, ethnicity, and the built environment. The child of immigrants, Rebhan documents the experience of several individual Jews under Hitler’s reign in Europe and their immigration stories. Her Art on the ART bus project commissioned by Arlington County, Virginia tells immigration/assimilation stories crossing generations and ethnic groups. She also creates photo-collages examining the cultural history of specific sites in Washington, D.C. and surrounding communities. Her recent self-portraits examine the taboo subject of female aging.
Rebhan has had works in hundreds of exhibitions including at the Lentos Kunstmuseum (Linz, Austria), Museum Folkwang (Essen, Germany), and Blue Sky Gallery (Portland, Oregon). In conjunction with her first museum retrospective Gail Rebhan, About Time at the American University Museum-Katzen Arts Center in Washington, DC, MACK Books published Gail Rebhan, About Time with running commentaries by Sally Stein. In 2025 the retrospective will travel to the California Museum of Photography at the University of California, Riverside. Rebhan photographs and coordinates exhibitions with the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition.