PLAYBOY PORTRAITS

Amy Turner - Playboy Portraits
Amy Turner - Playboy Portraits

Most of us have been there before: unintentionally finding our parents’ secret stash of playboys. A cringey coming-of-age moment that forces us to consider them as sexual beings which usually results in a hurried attempt to wash our eyes and brains of such thoughts. However, Amy Turner saw this as an artistic opportunity, especially when she discovered in the 2020 pandemic that her wife’s father owned three-hundred of them. While most normal folks would be delighted to see them on their way to the landfill, Turner took them in and began to recognize visual patterns from issue to issue: a formulaic sameness to the centerfolds, the carefully planned poses, hairstyles, and bodies that are iconically PlayBoy. She set off to create new portraiture from the old magazines, recombining them into even more generic bodies that began to look like classical Greek statuary, complete with missing heads and limbs. As she continues to collage new women from old, her collection of PlayBoys also grows, amassing now over 1,800 issues.

More ArtWork

  • Jay-Z With Cat

    Martin Schoeller (b. 1968, Germany) is one of the world’s preeminent contemporary portrait photographers. He is most known for his extreme close-up portraits, a series in which familiar faces are treated with the same scrutiny as the unfamous. The stylistic consistency of this work creates a democratic platform for comparison between his subjects, challenging a viewer’s […]

    Read More
  • Anthony Bourdain At The Brasserie Les Halles

    Martin Schoeller (b. 1968, Germany) is one of the world’s preeminent contemporary portrait photographers. He is most known for his extreme close-up portraits, a series in which familiar faces are treated with the same scrutiny as the unfamous. The stylistic consistency of this work creates a democratic platform for comparison between his subjects, challenging a viewer’s […]

    Read More