Description
The images in Krista Steinke’s series Backyards BBGuns and Nursery Rhymes combine the fantasy of classic children’s literature with a modern American setting.
“When Krista Steinke became a mother, she joined an ancient line of parents who have examined the myths versus the realities of understanding and raising children. As she revisited Mother Goose and Grimm’s fairy tales, she became fascinated with the roles that these stories play in the behavior and development of children. As child psychologist and writer Bruno Bettelheim and others have suggested, un-bowdlerized fairy tales, which are quite violent in their original forms, can function on levels that run deeper and more productively into a child’s developing consciousness than the sanitized versions that most modern readers and filmgoers are familiar with.”
— David L. Jacobs, Light Work Annual 2009
Krista Steinke is a Philadelphia-based artist who teaches photography and digital media at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA. Her work has been exhibited nationwide, including at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston; Houston Center for Photography; Peninsula Museum of Art in Belmont, CA; and Projects Gallery in Philadelphia, PA, among others. Steinke participated in Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence Program in July 2008.
