Knit Club

Assembly Curated presents Magnum photographer Carolyn Drake’s “Knit Club,” the result of a several-years-long collaboration with a group of women Drake met while living in Water Valley, Mississippi. The nature of the club is ambiguous. It is a cross between a gang, a cult of mysteries, and a group of friends bound by secrets. Drake leans toward the surreal and mysterious to present a different perspective on southern femininity and motherhood. Drake and her subjects collaboratively play with hiding and revealing the women’s faces and bodies, retaining a sense of interiority for a subject that has historically been fixed by the male gaze. Responding to the writer William Faulkner, the images are enigmatic, Gothic in style, and richly layered with a symbolism that resists interpretation. Drake’s subjects are also artists, integral to the construction of the photographs. “Knit Club” presents women, children, and mothers, shrouded in masks and mystery to live a life on their own terms.