Jeanne Dunning, An Artist That Studied At Oberlin College

Jeanne Dunning is an artist that studied at Oberlin College in Ohio and has exhibited the majority of her art in Chicago. Dunning works primarily with photography and is heavily inspired by the Surrealism movement, shifting reality in the way she portrays human body parts to convey strong themes of sexuality and feminism through a bizarre sense of humor. Dunning has a long history of creating images revolving around female sexuality, including a series she named â€Å"Untitled Landscapes,† which consisted of extreme close-ups of human body parts, as well as a series of photographs incorporating close-ups of fruit that strongly resemble female genitalia. Dunning also draws upon classic art categories such as portraits, landscapes, and the nude, playing on the expectations of these categories to reveal sexual implications. Her unique use of sexually charged images that play with the expectations of her viewers allows Dunning’s art to â€Å"[fit] within Postmodern concept s of sexual politics.† One of Dunning’s better known works comes from her 1989-90 series â€Å"Heads† and is aptly named â€Å"Head 2.† This photograph features a woman with black hair and a black sweater sitting in the center of a frame, the camera zoomed in on the subject to only include her head and the very top of her shoulders. The photograph is taken like a standard portrait would be, but the subject is facing away from the camera so we only see the back of her head. She is placed against an off-white background, creating