The first thing that strikes me when I look at the series is not so much the readers but the environments they inhabit.

Carrie Schneider invites us to read carefully. For the series Reading Women (2011) and their Hands, Schneider asked friends or acquaintances, all of which are artists and musicians, to be photographed and filmed whilst reading a work by a female writer, poet or composer. During the two-hour sitting Schneider records the women’s gradual engrossment in the books or texts, attempting to capture the moment when they have forgotten her presence and their inhibitions, or sense of self-awareness, have lifted. The series plays a subtle game of mise en abyme, in other words her photographs or films reveal a writer being read by a reader, in turn re-composed by a photographer, and re-read by the viewer.

The list of authors is both varied and enlightened; they read Clarice Lispector, Louisa May Alcott, Edith Wharton, Miranda July, Angela Carter, Fanny Howe, Virginia Woolfe, Isabel Wilkerson, Roseanne Barr, Gloria Fuertes, Sylvia Plath, Laura Mullen, Enheduanna, Mary Shelley etc. The list has an American emphasis, which helps locate the series geographically, but more importantly, it also has a feminist one.

In an age where reading is increasingly taking place on screen, the series pays homage to books, to taking the time and making the space for reading. More specifically, it pays tribute to women’s literature and the impact of their writings. The motif of the reading woman has been a rich yet somewhat subversive subject in the history of art and literature, from the figure of the muse, the religious scholar, woman of letters, to the bourgeois lady reading at her window, amongst others. And by picturing the readers’ hands holding their books, the viewers are offered the opportunity to immerse themselves in the rich prose or texts that are so compelling to their readers.

The first thing that strikes me when I look at the series is not so much the readers but the environments they inhabit. There seems to be little artifice in the images; they are taken mostly in the women’s own homes or studios, lit only by natural light. However, the scenes are carefully composed, especially when the light reflects ethereally on their features. I also notice the different types of vintage chairs, sofas, parquet floors, the windowsills, the various potted plants – details probably chosen carefully by each sitter – and whilst they are all different, they are ultimately similar. I then find myself thinking of those items that make a space feel like my ‘own’. Gradually, I am drawn into their worlds.

In these images Schneider is not simply repeating an art historical motif or offering an overview of women’s writing. She delves deeper, revealing something that is ultimately very intimate. The association here of the sitter and the name of the author offers a literal window onto their world. Whilst I scrutinise a particular subject’s appearance, how she dresses, what sofa she likes, I also try to fathom her; what makes her feel comfortable when she reads, how all this relates to what she is reading, in order to figure out who she ‘is’. The power of the series lies in its disarming quality enabling me, as a viewer, to map my thoughts onto the images, to share that imaginary space.

Schneider captures the reader caught between her mannerisms – be it smoking, stroking the cat, playing with her hair, drinking tea – and her engrossment in a book. By highlighting the subject’s gradual withdrawal and, perhaps, identification with the author, Schneider’s series deconstructs the women’s behaviour. A double game, as it also reveals how we, as viewers, read and interpret the image and map our own readings onto it. Thus, by attempting to expose the moment of loss of awareness it reveals how identity is effectively a constantly shifting construct, both psychologically and socially. The series, therefore, comes full circle as this shifting state of affairs can be clearly mapped through the history of women’s literature; a rich and varied subject which we should not cease to acknowledge.

Known for her interest in claiming what is ‘lost’, Schneider’s work enables us to project our ideas onto the works. Its power lies in the fact that, for a brief moment, we also lose ourselves by attempting to plunge deeper into the image, by getting engrossed in reading a passage from a book. We, too, are just readers who have momentarily paused to take inspiration from a work of art, transported by a portrait. And this is where we find ourselves in a hall of mirrors, caught in a perpetual cycle of reading and signification. Indeed, Schneider asks us to work hard, to transform an image that at first seems like an intimate encounter with a reader into an encounter with our reflected selves.