Poignant Pics no. 69: On Alon Goldsmith's “Welcome to Gilead”
Welcome to no. 69 in our series Poignant Pics, where our editor, Diana Nicholette Jeon, writes about Alon Goldsmith's image “Welcome to Gilead.”
“All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
When The Handmaid's Tale came to TV, everyone I knew was raving about it and telling me to watch. I could only get through the first two episodes before saying it was, for me, much too close to Trump's America, and I could not bear to watch. Little did I know then what lay ahead in 2022.
The past two weeks have been heydays for the ultra-conservative majority on the Supreme Court. It's been a continual assault on the will of the majority of the American citizenry. Two separate decisions mixing public education with prayer. Changes to Miranda. Allowing guns almost everywhere. An EPA decision that will upend not only the country’s but the world's attempts to save ourselves and our planet from human-induced climate change. But perhaps the gravest indignation and disruption is the one we already knew would happen when leaked documents surfaced in May—they upended a precedent in force since the 1970s with the Dobbs decision. Sure, Roe was always controversial and divisive. But it was also accepted by most Americans. That these justices felt the need to disguise their intentions regarding it when they sat for confirmation questioning disgusts me.
I'm beyond pissed at the idea of a "Theocratic American Taliban" at the land's highest court and at what the GOP is attempting to sell us. (Yes, I know you already know if you have seen my FB timeline or Twitter space.) Christianity and white supremacy are intertwined and foundational ideas in America, even though many in power in the GOP would like you to pretend it was not, even though the country was initiated by those trying to escape the forced practice of someone else's religion. I thought we were finally getting America to a place that was more accepting of racial, sexual, and gender rights and autonomy. Of course, that was before McConnell stole two Supreme court seats from Democratic administrations and rammed through justices hand-picked by the Heritage Foundation. I'll save you from a further rant on everything wrong with America. Most artists are already well aware, and those who aren't either aren't paying enough attention, or they applaud that we are moving backward in time to when women and minorities were non-persons under the law. Either way, the latter two groups won't hear my indignant words.
Enter Gilead from the 1985 novel and 2019 sequel by Margaret Atwood. Young women of reproductive age are Handmaids, who are told when and by whom they bear babies, which will then be taken away to be raised by others. Not all women in Gilead are Handmaids—those who cook and clean are Marthas; the Aunts teach other women how to be subjugated, and finally, we have the Wives, the 'trophy Barbies' who smile and look attractive while other women do all the work. (Yes, the latter existed before the Handmaid's Tale or American women's current civil rights crisis.) When the Dobbs decision leaked, Atwood wrote an op-ed for The Atlantic. She stated, "Although I eventually completed this novel and called it The Handmaid's Tale, I stopped writing it several times, because I considered it too far-fetched. Silly me. Theocratic dictatorships do not lie only in the distant past: There are a number of them on the planet today. What is to prevent the United States from becoming one of them?"
I saw this image by Alon Goldsmith online the same day as the horrific pronouncement came from the Supreme Court. As he is the father of two daughters, I imagine he wonders about their future as women in this country. Is this a "spectacular" image? No. I think there are minor tweaks that would address some of the small flaws. Is this an impactful image? Oh, heck, YES! It stopped me dead in my tracks, and I instantly messaged him to ask if I could write about it. There's not much more impact one could hope for as an artist than to induce someone to take immediate action in response to your work, right?
Welcome to Gilead is an image from his Signs of Resistance project, which features protestors posing for the camera at the Women's March in Los Angeles in 2019. He writes, "My intention is to pay homage to people's individual acts of resistance and showcase their singular responses to tyranny and injustice. Their expression is a dramatic public dance that plays out as they try at once to fit in and stand out. Common cause drives them, yet a desire for personal expression, often tinged with an element of humor, rides shotgun and is communicated through their signs and way of dress." (I thought he posed models and got the costumes for the image. Learning this was impromptu and done at a rally also lessens the "small flaw" factor for me.)
Bravo, Alon, for making visual my palpable rage. I hope you will continue to make the plight of women known as we live through this most unpleasant era.
Welcome to Gillead
Artist Bio
Dubbed “LA’s iPhoneography Wizard” by Forbes magazine, Alon Goldsmith is an award-winning photographer who has been featured extensively across media and exhibited in galleries around the globe.
Alon’s achievements include overall winner of the MIRA Mobile Prize in 2022, 3rd place in the Los Angeles Center of Photography’s Street Photography Around the World Competition, and runner-up in the journalism category in the prestigious MPAs. Alon was a jury member for the 2018 and 2019 MPAs. His work has also been published in the Los Angeles Times, Reader's Digest, the Forward, the Argonaut, and the App Whisperer, and has been extensively featured in Snap and Mobiography magazines.
See more of his work on Instagram: @Alon_Goldsmith
Author Bio
Diana Nicholette Jeon is an award-winning artist based in Honolulu, HI, who works primarily with lens-based media. Her work has been seen both internationally and nationally in solo and group exhibitions. Jeon holds an MFA from UMBC.