Suzy Lake (b.1947, Detroit, Michigan)

In the eighty-eight images of the ground-breaking installation Are You Talking to Me?, Suzy Lake (b.1947) recites a question made famous by the performance of actor Robert De Niro in the movie Taxi Driver. The artwork is the culmination of Lake’s investigation of experiences of internal conflict and feelings of alienation. The technically sophisticated project involved heating and stretching the negatives, as well as painting and re-photographing some of the prints, all with the aim of conveying emotional intensity, something Lake has examined throughout her career.  Her innovative exploration of gender identity through performance and photography paved the way for a generation of artists.

Born in Detroit, Lake immigrated to Montreal in 1968, where she became active in the city’s contemporary art scene. Initially a painter, she began experimenting with photography in works about gender identity, such as Miss Chatelaine, 1973. Using herself as her model, Lake explored different ways to critique the social constraints women experienced, and she turned to the grid as a format for presenting the images that capture her performances. As both subject and author of works such as Choreographed Puppets, 1976–77, in which she appears suspended like a marionette, Lake considered questions of power and restraint through a physical metaphor.

In 1978, Lake moved to Toronto, where she became affiliated with a community of photographers interested in advancing the profile of photography as contemporary art.  As her work grew more introspective, Lake continued to explore issues of confinement and control. In the series Pre-Resolution: Using the Ordinances at Hand, 1983–84, she is pictured smashing a vermilion red wall with a sledgehammer. The twelve large-scale photographs track her destruction of the walls that constrain her.

Lake’s innovative feminist work was included in international exhibitions such as WACK! Art and Feminist Revolution 1965–1980 in Los Angeles (2007). In 2014, the Art Gallery of Ontario organized a major retrospective of her work, and in 2016, Lake received a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts and the Scotiabank Photography Award. She is professor emeritus at the University of Guelph.