Julie Buck

Julie Anne Buck (born December 9, 1974) is an American collage artist, photographer, filmmaker, and film archivist who lives in New York City.

Life

Buck was born in Walnut Creek, California to a middle-class family and was raised in the nearby city of Concord. A few days after Buck's seventh birthday, her father died in an automobile accident. Her mother, looking for work to support her children, proceeded to move the family to Provo, Utah.

From an early age, Buck was fascinated with film—particularly with American movie musicals from the early sound era to the 1960s. In college she gravitated toward that interest, graduating in 1997 with a degree in film history and a minor in art history. During her undergraduate years she also developed a keen interest in photography and silent film. Encouraged by a professor, she proceeded to graduate studies at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York.

After graduating from Eastman House, Buck became the manager for the Harvard Film Archive at Harvard University. While sorting and preserving films in the Archive's collection, she and her friend and co-archivist Karin Segal became interested in the images of women (known as "China girls") which often appear on the leaders of older films. Buck and Segal began the long process of digitally cleaning, restoring and printing these enigmatic images for an art exhibit titled "Girls On Film," a visual tribute to the many anonymous women who worked in the film industry.

At the same time, Buck began to experiment with collage. Her first large-format collage, "Black-Haired Girl: Karin", depicted Segal, with a challenging stare, raising a glass of orange juice at the viewer. Buck has created three collage series to date—"Black-Haired Girls," "Heads" and "Blank Slate"—and has also completed two commissioned works.

In college, Buck received a 1950 Rolleiflex camera that had been owned by her great-grandfather and began using it to take pictures. "Self-Centered," a series of black-and-white photographs of herself wearing various articles of clothing in deliberately staged surroundings, was the result. (The self-mocking title was suggested by one of Buck's former boyfriends.)

Recently, after a number of years away from school, Buck decided to pursue her interests in narrative filmmaking. She was accepted to the graduate program at Columbia University's film school in 2006.

Works

Buck's collage work tends to traverse the fine line between purely visually-representative art and abstract depictions of the personality traits of her subjects. Her black-and-white photograph series, "Self-Centered," is reminiscent of the work of Cindy Sherman, reflecting both Buck's sense of humor and her keen interest in classic film. The black-and-white and color prints of the "Girls On Film" series are both familiar and enigmatic; many images are reminiscent of famous actresses from different film eras.

Buck's work has been exhibited in galleries in Columbus, Ohio; Boston; Cambridge and New York.

Collage series

* "Black-Haired Girls", 1998-2005.
* "Heads", 2004
* "Blank Slate", 2005.

Photograph series

* "Self-Centered", 1999.
* "Girls on Film" (with Karin Segal), 2005.

Books

* "Girls on Film", 2007 (forthcoming).

External links

* [http://www.juliebuck.com Official website]
* [http://www.artmuseums.harvard.edu/press/released2005/girls_on_film.html Press release for "Girls on Film" at the Sert Gallery, Harvard]
* [http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2005/07.21/00-girls.html "Girls on Film" article from the "Harvard Gazette"]
* [http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=14311 "Girls on Film" article from Artdaily.com]
* [http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/07.18/11-staffshow.html "Harvard Gazette" article featuring a "Black Haired Girl" collage]