Purple Magazine
— S/S 2009 issue 11
Leigh Ledare
The young artist LEIGH LEDARE is best known for his book, Pretend You’re Actually Alive, a chronicle of his unusually intimate relationship with his mother, which features photographs of her in the buff and with her young lovers. For this visual essay Ledare pairs more images of her with material from a new project for which he took out personal ads for women and then had the respondents photograph him. As he explains, he doesn’t just “focus on interpersonal transactions,”
he pushes the envelope of intimacy itself — about as far as it can go — by directing his mother and by letting other women direct him.
