Born in 1970 in Los Angeles, Anne Collier studied photography at the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, where she received a BFA in 1993, and the University of California Los Angeles, earning an MFA in 2001. Collier’s photographs offer a straightforward presentation of found images and printed ephemera, and explore themes of appropriation, iconography, and surrogacy. The items pictured—including record albums, cassette tapes, vintage magazines, and posters—are populated by motifs such as the camera, the eye, and the female body. Collier shoots her subjects against a neutral background and often employs the effect of doubling to highlight seemingly identical objects that have been individualized by use and wear. This deadpan aesthetic often creates a tension with her subject matter, downplaying its emotional, autobiographical, or erotic content. For instance, in her images of self-help cassette tapes, such as Introduction, Fear, Anger, Despair, Guilt, Hope, Joy, Love/Conclusion (2002), the emotional struggle signaled by the tapes’ labels is counterbalanced by the restrained compositions, introducing an ironic distance. One of the artist’s recurrent subjects is the “woman with a camera” trope often found in films and advertisements from the 1970s and ’80s. Such images, including Woman With a Camera (Cheryl Tiegs/Olympus 1) (2008), seem to suggest that a woman’s use of a camera signals her independence and empowerment since the protagonist takes the mechanism of representation into her own hands. Collier’s attention to this pervasive motif casts suspicion on such claims, reminding viewers that possession of the camera has not liberated these women from becoming subjects of the male gaze. Though implicitly layered with feminist critiques of mass media, Collier’s images of famous women—especially those of other artists, like Cindy Sherman, for example—can also be interpreted as oblique self-portraits. The titles of these works often include references to the (always male) photographer of the original image in a self-reflexive gesture that further highlights how women artists—whether singers, actors, or photographers—are represented in a heterosexual economy of desire. Collier’s work has been exhibited in solo shows at such venues as Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany (2008); Nottingham Contemporary, United Kingdom (2011); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2014). She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions including Day for Night, Whitney Biennial, New York (2006); 10,000 Lives, Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2010); Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010); New Photography 2012, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012); and Photo-Poetics: An Anthology, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2015). Collier lives and works in New York.