Document <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?xml-model href="http://www.tei-c.org/release/xml/tei/custom/schema/relaxng/tei_all.rng" type="application/xml" schematypens="http://relaxng.org/ns/structure/1.0"?> <?xml-model href="http://www.tei-c.org/release/xml/tei/custom/schema/relaxng/tei_all.rng" type="application/xml" schematypens="http://purl.oclc.org/dsdl/schematron"?> <?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LEAF-VRE/code_snippets/refs/heads/main/CSS/leaf.css" title="LEAF" ?> <TEI xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0"> <teiHeader> <fileDesc> <titleStmt> <title>Body, Space and Personal Ritual</title> <author>Sherry Markovitz</author> <respStmt> <persName>Eowyn Andres</persName> <resp>Editor (2024-Present)</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Haley Beardsley</persName> <resp>Editor (2021-2024)</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Lyndon Beier</persName> <resp>Editor (2023-Present)</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Erica Delsandro</persName> <resp>Investigator, editor</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Mia DeRoco</persName> <resp>Editor (2023-Present)</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Margaret Hunter</persName> <resp>Editor (2021-2024)</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Diane Jakacki</persName> <resp>Invesigator, encoder</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Sophie McQuaide</persName> <resp>Editor (2021-2023)</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Olivia Martin</persName> <resp>Editor, encoder (2021)</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Zoha Nadeer</persName> <resp>Editor (2022-2023)</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Bri Perea</persName> <resp>Editor (2022-2023)</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Carrie Pirmann</persName> <resp>Editor, encoder (2023-Present)</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Valeria Riley</persName> <resp>Editor (2024-Present)</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Ricky Rodriguez</persName> <resp>Editor (2022-2023)</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Roger Rothman</persName> <resp>Investigator, editor</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Valeria Riley</persName> <resp>Editor (2024-Present)</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Kaitlyn Segreti</persName> <resp>Editor (2021-Present)</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Maggie Smith</persName> <resp>Editor (2021-2024)</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Maya Wadhwa</persName> <resp>Editor (2021-2023)</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Kelly Troop</persName> <resp>Editor (2023-Present)</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Lucy Wadswoth</persName> <resp>Editor (2022-Present)</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Anna Marie Wingard</persName> <resp>Editor (2023-Present)</resp> </respStmt> <respStmt> <persName>Olivia Wychock</persName> <resp>Graduate Editor (2024-Present)</resp> </respStmt> <funder>Bucknell University Humanities Center</funder> <funder>Bucknell University Office of Undergraduate Research</funder> <funder>The Mellon Foundation</funder> <funder>National Endowment for the Humanities</funder> </titleStmt> <publicationStmt> <distributor> <name>Bucknell University</name> <address> <street>One Dent Drive</street> <settlement>Lewisburg</settlement> <region>Pennsylvania</region> <postCode>17837</postCode> </address> </distributor> <availability> <licence>Bucknell Heresies Project: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)</licence> <licence>Heresies journal: © Heresies Collective</licence> </availability> </publicationStmt> <sourceDesc> <biblStruct> <analytic> <title>Patterns of Communicating and Space Among Women</title> </analytic> <monogr> <imprint> <publisher>HERESIES: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics</publisher> <pubPlace> <address> <name>Heresies</name> <postBox>P.O. Boxx 766, Canal Street Station</postBox> <settlement>New York</settlement> <region>New York</region> <postCode>10013</postCode> </address> </pubPlace> </imprint> </monogr> </biblStruct> </sourceDesc> </fileDesc> </teiHeader> <text> <body> <pb/> <div type="essay"> <pb n="19" facs="https://leaf.bucknell.edu/sites/default/files/2025-02/heresies02_019.jpg"/> <head> Body, Space and Personal Ritual</head> <byline>Sherry Markovitz</byline> <div> <p> My initial ideas for this project con cerned the observation and documentation of a 24-hour period in a woman’s life, long enough to allow a certain time, body state or space to dominate. To date I have documented six people and am still in the process of observing four of them, including my mother, Rose, my sister, Merilyn, and my sister’s four-year-old daughter, Anda (who occupies one bedroom and one playroom).</p> <p> In my photographs I try to locate the feelings and sensations of my subjects, though sometimes it is just a scanning process. I am concerned with a person s experience at a particular time and in a particular space. Past and future apply only when they obviously relate to the present; for example, a woman in her ninth month of pregnancy who has gained 40 pounds has a different energy than in prepregnancy, and her movements become cumbersome, fewer, and more focused.</p> <p> My selection of subjects has been critical. I have chosen for the most part by instinct. External circumstances, such as economic constrictions, are major factors in occupation of space, so I have selected women from diverse economic, educa tional and cultural backgrounds. There is also a wide variety in the degree of intimacy, as my subjects range from my mother and sister to total strangers. I am documenting a lesbian couple because women living openly with other women in love/sexual relationships is one of the important recent changes in women’s life styles. I had thought about documenting a transsexual and a pair of identical twins, but I finally decided that such unique situations emphasized the anomalies and detracted from exploring the essentials of body, space and personal ritual. I always ask, "Why do you want to be documented?" The answers often contain vital clues. Some people just want to be observed. Some have a fantasy or a political-ideological commitment they want to project through their space, personal ritual and body movement. For instance, many feminists have approached me, but I want to document women’s space, not just feminists’ space.</p> <p> Two events have been significant in my use and understanding of my own space since I began this project. First I painted my bathroom and then I moved from my 500-square-foot home to a new apartment with 1200 square feet, which I trans formed into a fantasy of space that I had had for a long time —large, empty, quiet, low stimulation. The second event was being hospitalized for ten days with a serious pelvic infection. I was given a little tray with powder, cream, toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash and cup. Nurses and doctors took over the care of my body, which was so much a part of my personal ritual. I adapted to this external ly imposed space, but as I recovered, I began to reassert my control over my personal ritual. When I shared a room, it was with a very sick woman who had cancer. I observed what happens when the disintegration of a person’s body breaks down her ability to control her own space and ritual. I listened to the nurses and doctors repeating how good she smelled from baby powder. I began to think about this and what happens in prisons, mental institutions, hospitals, nursing homes, dormitories, the army. I thought about how a person maintains her personal ritual or utilizes space in such involuntary circumstances, what a woman takes with her to such places.</p> <p> My project is primarily concerned with how a person takes up space, whether or not she seems to fill a room, how her use of space relates to that of her husband, children or roommates. I had trouble understanding one woman who seemed perfectly at ease with her body; perhaps it was just that which lessened her need to order or definitively affect external space. </p> <p> Some people don’t make good subjects be cause their lives are too much in flux or too disintegrated. With others it is hard to separate what the subject believes to be true from what I observe.</p> <p> It is important to me that the subject really understand what the project is about on her own terms. I have to feel comfortable with my subjects, to feel that I am not intruding too much. What they do and don’t want photographed is informative, though I don’t want to be controlled by what someone wants me to see. Concealment is a delicate issue I've thought about a lot. The project is really about disclosure, about how much a woman is able to disclose to the artist. As soon as the camera comes in, there is in evitably a certain amount of playacting. I have to understand that, and at the same time minimize my presence to get as real a picture as possible of everyday ritual and space.</p> <p> The key to personal ritual is found in different places for different women. It may appear in the areas to which a woman devotes the most energy during the day. And yet a dirty kitty-litter box may say something more important — or plants (when they are watered or moved into the sunlight), or the humidifier (the ritual of keeping it filled and the space at the proper temperature), or the medicine cabinet, the phone, the television set, a workspace, shopping bag, refrigerator, cupboard shelves, cosmetics drawer. The pace of the daily ritual is particularly important. In one case the care and time taken to wrap a head of lettuce indicated general “compulsive perfection." The same woman told me that she had once sent out her cloth napkins to be cleaned and pressed for her husband’s birthday dinner party. They "didn’t look right" when they came back from the laundry, so she rewashed and reironed all of them. </p> </div> <div> <pb n="20" facs="https://leaf.bucknell.edu/sites/default/files/2025-02/heresies02_020.jpg"/> <head>Rose</head> <p>Jewish, 57 years old, married for 37 years, three grown children, part-time housewife recently returned to nursing on part-time basis. She has started studying Spanish to understand her non-English-speaking clients and volunteers her nursing services periodically at a second clinic. Still spends a great deal of time cooking, cleaning, and caring for people (husband, grandchild once a week, often visiting children). The day always starts early and goes quickly, with great activity. Her husband, a car dealer (age 63), used to put in an eight- to 12-hour day. He now comes home earlier and they have (to her joy) more social life. Rose also entertains her friends at home (a two-story house) with weekly dinners of lox and bagels (paid for on a rotating basis by "the girls”), followed by a Mah-jongg game. Bedtime is usually nine or ten, sometimes earlier, but never without an evening bath. Probably the greatest changes for her at this time are the recent loss of her mother, the coming of a second grandchild, and the full transition to "grandmotherhood."</p> </div> <pb n="23" facs="https://leaf.bucknell.edu/sites/default/files/2025-02/heresies02_021.jpg"/> <div> <head>Merilyn</head> <p>Married, 34 years old, a mother, expecting her second child, working on a Ph.D. in human development—"busy, researcher, clinician, social worker, psychologist, woman." She feels a lot of pressure to fulfill many roles. The pregnancy has made both physical and mental activity more difficult, with many days needed for rest and many nights to bed early. What is obvious about Merilyn is the pleasure and time she takes for personal ritual, both alone and with her family. The white space, although designed by her artist husband, is also an expression of her own aesthetic — it comes from the need to create a sanctuary. In her demographic form for this project, she describes her marital status as "a lot, happy, traditional, non-traditional"; her ethnic background as "a lot (chicken soup)"; her religion as "sometimes." </p> </div> </div> </body> <back> <p>Sherry Markovitz, age 29, is an artist living in Seattle who works photographically with themes of family and sex differences.</p> </back> </text> </TEI> Document Download Object Type XML document Related Item No
