Elinor Carucci

Edwynn Houk Gallery is pleased to present Elinor Carucci’s photographs of the collars of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in conjunction with the publication of her fifth monograph, The Collars of Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Portrait of Justice, with Sara Bader (Clarkson Potter/Random House, 14 November 2023).

Elinor Carucci (b. 1971) is an Israeli-American photographer of Mizrahi Jewish descent who immigrated to New York in 1995. Her work exploring intimate personal spaces with her own body and family has garnered awards from the ICP (2001), the Guggenheim Foundation (2002), and NYFA (2010). Her photographs encompass an intimate portrait of her family (Closer, 2002); mending partnerships (Crisis, 2003); a behind-the-scenes look at dancing from the artist’s perspective (Diary of a Dancer, 2005); the early life of her children (Mother, 2013); and aging (Midlife, 2019).

The Collars of RBG extended Carucci’s oeuvre into the format of still life after Time Magazine asked her to document the Supreme Court justice’s iconic collars in 2020. With her penchant for unlocking private relationships through intimate details, Carucci frames Ginsburg’s neckwear as evocations of symbols of her position.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been called the ‘the most important woman lawyer in the history of the republic’ for her tireless championing of gender equality before the law, ascending the highest court in the land as the second woman in its history, thirty years ago. Ginsburg’s arguments are famously fierce – the nickname “Notorious” (first coined by then-law-student/blogger Shana Knizhnik in 2013, now widely adopted) aligns Ginsburg’s with the stylings of Biggie Smalls, two Brooklyn-born wordsmiths known for assertiveness and charismatic flow. Ginsburg credited her literary style to the influence of the novelist Vladimir Nabokov with whom she studied in the 1950s, but her legal writing is notably concise compared to these influences. Her sartorial expressions carried far more bombast, as Sara Bader’s essay makes clear:

“RBG and Justice O’Connor…set themselves apart from their male colleagues, each adorning their uniform with a traditional white jabot—a frill of lace or other type of fabric fastened at the neck and worn over the front of a shirt or robe... French magistrates wear jabots as well, known there as rabats. Lace was considered a marker of wealth and status, not gender... and lace neckpieces, such as jabots... were traditionally worn by men.”

The collars themselves are internationally iconic, and Carucci’s elegant portraits meditate on the intimate proximity to this powerful woman. Their palpable physicality reminds the viewer of the powerful symbolism woven throughout the history of women's craft, decoration, costume, and jewelry, and the closeness to the body of one of the most powerful women in American history. Ginsburg’s collars evince a throughline in Carucci’s work of exploring strength and vulnerability via profound closeness to the human body.