Zoe Crosher: The Reconsidered Archive of Michelle du Bois

In the 1970s and ‘80s, an American woman named Michelle du Bois traveled alone through cities in the Pacific Rim and documented her highly sexual and liberated lifestyle, collecting hundreds of tourist photographs, family snapshots, and risque images of herself – and her alter egos. In The Reconsidered Archive of Michelle du Bois, artist Zoe Crosher has manipulated these archived materials to elicit various narratives from within du Bois’s complex process of auto-documentation. In Crosher’s photographic groupings, Du Bois is both heroine and ingénue, toying with persona, identity, fetishism and exoticism. A distinct portrait of a woman emerges, one tied to the women’s and sexual liberation movements of the era, while revealing the vulnerability that accompanies the trappings of her lifestyle and her slippery identity.

Zoe Crosher is a Los Angeles-based artist. She received her MFA from CalArts in Valencia, CA and her BA from UC Santa Cruz. Selected exhibitions include: 1-Yr Later, Diverseworks, Houston and DEleanor Hardwood Gallery, San Francisco; OUT THE WINDOW (LAX) at DCKT Contemporary, NY and Small A Projects, Portland, OR; Small Things Fail, Great Things Endure, New Langton Arts, San Francisco, CA and Re-Make, Re-Model, d’Amelio Terras, New York, NY.