Jane Wenger

[16][14] Her early figurative work was influenced by modernists and surrealists such as Bill Brandt and Magritte, as well as by fashion photographers such as Hiro, Guy Bourdin and Chris von Wangenheim.

[18][29][28] Reviews highlight the series' mythic and sculptural qualities, exploration of the male body's sensuality and strength, and play of forms across the individual images.

[14] Small in measure, the dramatically foreshortened and cropped images transform the female body into abstract suggestions of landscape or monumental totem-like forms.

[3][31][34] In a 1979 Afterimage review, Carole Harmel contrasted Wenger's tension-filled, sexually ambiguous female forms with Romantic traditions of the nude in repose or harmony with nature.

[28] In 1977, officials of the John Hancock Center—the site of an Artemisia show—censored five of Wenger's self-portraits over concerns about nudity, despite their previous exhibition without controversy at a suburban high school and several colleges.

[5][28] The series emphasizes the sensuality of surfaces, with excruciatingly detailed depictions of pores, veins, beads of water and expanses of skin that read as abstract forms, textures and land masses.

[6][5] In a Village Voice review of Wenger's first solo show in New York (Foto, 1978), critic Fred McDarrah described them as surreal pictures with "a strange magnetism" that was "repulsive yet compelling.

"[19] For the "Faces" series (1978–9), Wenger shot bodybuilders lifting weights in extreme close-up, leaving only grimacing mouths, clenched teeth and straining mask-like features in flattened space.

[5][39] They consisted of mural-sized prints, hung in a black, narrow, low-ceilinged room with lights pinpointing only the images, forcing viewers into tense, close proximity to the faces.