honorable mention
Alice Zilberberg canada
title
The Death of "Happily Ever After"
I choose to narrate the story as well as participate in it, placing myself as the dark haired heroin. She is not saved by a prince, but alone and in despair, or even dead. Playing the role of the girl character, I challenge conventional ideas about how a woman should act, look, and be like.
The dark aesthetic takes the stories back to their origins, mocking the Disney versions for their simplistic happy endings. The twisted narrative in the images and use of character also challenges mainstream cultural myths how her story really ends.
Zilberberg merges traditional photography and computer illustration, creating images that bridge the platforms of photography and painting. Her work marries reality and fantasy, echoing elements of surrealism and baroque art. Her work has explored the intersection between femininity and the essence of female power linked to the natural environment. Examining traditional female iconography, the work strips these narratives of outdated notions of women as a weaker sex and emphasizing female empowerment. Her latest landscape series explores themes of identity, displacement and belonging by fusing images of the two places she’s called home.
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entry description
The Death of “Happily Ever After” is a dark reimagining of Disney’s fairy tales. These stories were originally sinister and included harsh punishments of characters, sexual inferences and death. Yet they were also rich and expressive, and often written by women. Disnification has rendered them shallow, where all blonde-haired, blue-eyed princesses are saved by their knight in shining armour. This series attempts to thematically take these fairy tales back in time through image composites. I create my own versions of Walt Disney’s best known tales, that don’t necessarily end happily ever after.I choose to narrate the story as well as participate in it, placing myself as the dark haired heroin. She is not saved by a prince, but alone and in despair, or even dead. Playing the role of the girl character, I challenge conventional ideas about how a woman should act, look, and be like.
The dark aesthetic takes the stories back to their origins, mocking the Disney versions for their simplistic happy endings. The twisted narrative in the images and use of character also challenges mainstream cultural myths how her story really ends.
about the photographer
Alice Zilberberg is an award-winning photographer and visual artist, born in Estonia, raised in Israel, and now based in Toronto, Canada. A graduate of Ryerson University’s Photography program, she has exhibited in galleries across Canada, the US and Japan, and published internationally, most recently in PHOTO+ Magazine in Seoul, Korea. Her work has sold in auction houses and charity auctions, including Waddingtons, Snap! and ORT.Zilberberg merges traditional photography and computer illustration, creating images that bridge the platforms of photography and painting. Her work marries reality and fantasy, echoing elements of surrealism and baroque art. Her work has explored the intersection between femininity and the essence of female power linked to the natural environment. Examining traditional female iconography, the work strips these narratives of outdated notions of women as a weaker sex and emphasizing female empowerment. Her latest landscape series explores themes of identity, displacement and belonging by fusing images of the two places she’s called home.
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