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Exposure
“Luminous and affecting . . . [Exposure] examines the often fine line between art and abuse. . . . Taut in plot, beautifully realistic, and intelligently disturbing.”–Harper’s BazaarAnn Rogers appears to be a happily married, successful young woman. A talented photographer, she creates happy memories for others, videotaping weddings, splicing together scenes of smiling faces, editing out awkward moments. But she cannot edit her own memories so easily–images of a childhood spent as her father’s model and muse, the subject of his celebrated series of controversial photographs. To cope, Ann slips into a secret life of shame and vice. But when the Museum of Modern Art announces a retrospective of her father’s shocking portraits, Ann finds herself teetering on the edge of self-destruction, desperately trying to escape the psychological maelstrom that threatens to consume her.“Astounding . . . told in prose as multifaceted as a diamond, crystalline and mesmerizing. ‘Remarkable’ hardly goes far enough.”–Cosmopolitan“Impossible to put down . . . Kathryn Harrison is an extremely gifted writer, poetic, passionate, and elegant.”–San Francisco Chronicle“Exquisite, exhilarating, and harrowing.”–Donna Tartt, author of The Secret History and The Little Friend“A breathless urban nightmare not easy to forget. Stark, brilliant, and original work.”–Kirkus Reviews (starred review) From the Trade Paperback edition.
240 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1993
About the author
Kathryn Harrison
52 books305 followersKathryn Harrison is the author of the novels Envy, The Seal Wife, The Binding Chair, Poison, Exposure, and Thicker Than Water.
She has also written memoirs, The Kiss and The Mother Knot, a travel memoir, The Road to Santiago, a biography, Saint Therese of Lisieux, and a collection of personal essays, Seeking Rapture.
Ms. Harrison is a frequent reviewer for The New York Times Book Review; her essays, which have been included in many anthologies, have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Vogue, O, The Oprah Magazine, Salon, and other publications.
She lives in New York with her husband, the novelist Colin Harrison, and their children.
She has also written memoirs, The Kiss and The Mother Knot, a travel memoir, The Road to Santiago, a biography, Saint Therese of Lisieux, and a collection of personal essays, Seeking Rapture.
Ms. Harrison is a frequent reviewer for The New York Times Book Review; her essays, which have been included in many anthologies, have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Vogue, O, The Oprah Magazine, Salon, and other publications.
She lives in New York with her husband, the novelist Colin Harrison, and their children.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews
November 9, 2009
There was a kind of woman who was very fashionable throughout the nineties - intellectual, talented, beautiful, damaged in some vague and unspoken way. These women made a performance of their damage and of their self-destruction and took us all along for the ride. Kathryn Harrison, with her memoir of incest with her father The Kiss was certainly one of them. I think also of Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation) and to a certain extent Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness), although I honestly think Jamison is ultimately more scholarly and less transgressive than the other two (and ultimately more successful). Ann Rogers, the main character in Exposure: A Novel is definitely one of them.
Harrison's prose is razor-sharp and her characterizations are clear and unmuddied, but there's something dishonest at the heart of this novel and I can't quite put my finger on what it is. Perhaps it is the way that sickness and misery are romanticized through this character. Perhaps it is the cold and enabling nature of the people around her. Maybe it's the refusal to truly examine the relationship between father and daughter that is at the center of all of this misery.
Does Harrison capture what it feels like to begin spinning out of control in this way? Yes and no. Yes, in that Ann is certainly spinning out of control and no, in that her wealth privilege ultimately cushion her in a way that takes the reader and all of the characters in the novel out of the story. Depression and suicidal self-destruction are neither glamorous nor pretty - Harrison spends too much time on and just past the edge of pretty to make this book truly work.
Harrison's prose is razor-sharp and her characterizations are clear and unmuddied, but there's something dishonest at the heart of this novel and I can't quite put my finger on what it is. Perhaps it is the way that sickness and misery are romanticized through this character. Perhaps it is the cold and enabling nature of the people around her. Maybe it's the refusal to truly examine the relationship between father and daughter that is at the center of all of this misery.
Does Harrison capture what it feels like to begin spinning out of control in this way? Yes and no. Yes, in that Ann is certainly spinning out of control and no, in that her wealth privilege ultimately cushion her in a way that takes the reader and all of the characters in the novel out of the story. Depression and suicidal self-destruction are neither glamorous nor pretty - Harrison spends too much time on and just past the edge of pretty to make this book truly work.
October 7, 2011
With hindsight--the cue from Kathryn Harrison's memoir "Kiss" published a few years after "Exposure"--it is clear why a father-daughter's relationship is a central theme in her writing.
"Exposure" is written in beautiful lyrical prose that has immediacy and intimacy as the story explores the inner world of Ann Rogers. When the younger Ann served as her father's photography model, she had to keep her pose still for hours on end. She sacrificed play and study time normal children would have in order to please a man that would never pay her attention otherwise. Her quest for his affection--the only time he ever touched her was to rearrange her hair or limbs for a photo--is both pathetic and infuriating. But what Ann didn't know until after his death was that he also spied on her at times she believed she was alone. That invasion sealed her scars and plunged her further into her loss of identity.
We are accompanying the adult Ann in her struggle to find herself, while hiding from people closest to her.
I particularly liked Kathryn Harrison's breaking of the mold of today's fiction. (Perhaps in 1993, when Exposure was first published, publishers were less formulaic.) The protagonist is not a heroine in the current fiction's definition of one who overcomes mounting obstacles. Instead, we journey with Ann as she descends into darker and darker places within herself.
SPOILER: At the end, Harrison leaves the struggle unfinished and unresolved ending. She does not tie loose ends neatly and leaves the reader to wonder whether Ann could ever really make it.
"Exposure" is written in beautiful lyrical prose that has immediacy and intimacy as the story explores the inner world of Ann Rogers. When the younger Ann served as her father's photography model, she had to keep her pose still for hours on end. She sacrificed play and study time normal children would have in order to please a man that would never pay her attention otherwise. Her quest for his affection--the only time he ever touched her was to rearrange her hair or limbs for a photo--is both pathetic and infuriating. But what Ann didn't know until after his death was that he also spied on her at times she believed she was alone. That invasion sealed her scars and plunged her further into her loss of identity.
We are accompanying the adult Ann in her struggle to find herself, while hiding from people closest to her.
I particularly liked Kathryn Harrison's breaking of the mold of today's fiction. (Perhaps in 1993, when Exposure was first published, publishers were less formulaic.) The protagonist is not a heroine in the current fiction's definition of one who overcomes mounting obstacles. Instead, we journey with Ann as she descends into darker and darker places within herself.
SPOILER: At the end, Harrison leaves the struggle unfinished and unresolved ending. She does not tie loose ends neatly and leaves the reader to wonder whether Ann could ever really make it.
January 12, 2013
A good read, this novel. Exposure tells the story of the daughter of a noted photographer, taking her from early childhood as Daddy's model, to life after Father has died, and on into her own career as a videographer doing the wedding circuit. Ann Rogers is a mess as humans go. Secrets and undiscovered sins feed the woman's behaviour--including an addiction to meth, strong kleptomaniac tendencies, and strange actions that are cringe-worthy at times. We get to the bottom of her dysfunction, but there is no easy fix. Though I didn't care for the ending, it is worth a read.
October 28, 2021
Exposure by Kathryn Harrison
Different than what I imagine first book I’ve read that the main character is mentally ill if you don’t count my ‘Our Trump Dystopian Nightmare shelf’, ok so this is the first book with a Simi-likable character who is mentally ill and in whose story I struggled with relating but the writing can’t knock how well crafted how natural and smoothly written it is, and I think this is a really good writer just this was rather outside my comfort zone and I’m sure that was the whole point to paint a realistic portrait of something that we don’t think about because the pathology of Ann’s dysfunction is rather unique and it turns her into a very rare and strange fish, I found myself both interested and repelled angry and frustrated, have to give it at least four stars for that different sort of focus almost makes up for the weak ending and really I didn’t much like the main character so it’s kind of hard for me to give it five stars although the writing is very high quality and the story is engaging an emotional detached father who was more interested in his daughter as a multi-year art project creating what the world thought was a highly intimate documentation of innocence but was in fact creating a highly disturbed and incredible self-involved addict with huge daddy issues and other health concerns. I imagine when I picked up this book that more of the focus would be on the lens of the voyeur her dad but the story followed Ann as she crashed and burned then some sort of self-repair was in progress at the end but I was like done with the whole drama of this woman’s life by that point. So it’s kind of a three and a half star book but the writing was at times four and a half stars so give it four stars overall interesting and not too long psychology of a person turned inside out disappearing into herself then acting out in shocking ways.
Different than what I imagine first book I’ve read that the main character is mentally ill if you don’t count my ‘Our Trump Dystopian Nightmare shelf’, ok so this is the first book with a Simi-likable character who is mentally ill and in whose story I struggled with relating but the writing can’t knock how well crafted how natural and smoothly written it is, and I think this is a really good writer just this was rather outside my comfort zone and I’m sure that was the whole point to paint a realistic portrait of something that we don’t think about because the pathology of Ann’s dysfunction is rather unique and it turns her into a very rare and strange fish, I found myself both interested and repelled angry and frustrated, have to give it at least four stars for that different sort of focus almost makes up for the weak ending and really I didn’t much like the main character so it’s kind of hard for me to give it five stars although the writing is very high quality and the story is engaging an emotional detached father who was more interested in his daughter as a multi-year art project creating what the world thought was a highly intimate documentation of innocence but was in fact creating a highly disturbed and incredible self-involved addict with huge daddy issues and other health concerns. I imagine when I picked up this book that more of the focus would be on the lens of the voyeur her dad but the story followed Ann as she crashed and burned then some sort of self-repair was in progress at the end but I was like done with the whole drama of this woman’s life by that point. So it’s kind of a three and a half star book but the writing was at times four and a half stars so give it four stars overall interesting and not too long psychology of a person turned inside out disappearing into herself then acting out in shocking ways.
September 7, 2024
Picking up this book was easy—the title, cover, and synopsis drew me in immediately. At first, I was hesitant on if it would be worthwhile for me to read this book, especially considering its potentially controversial and triggering contents; but I am SO GLAD I decided to read this book! Published in 1993, this book is now 31 years old, yet I am so surprised that I hadn’t heard of it sooner. This is the first book I came across from this author, and I feel that it deserves high acclaim. I also felt I would love to see this in a movie, though perhaps it would be too stirring to depict its themes and imagery on the big screen?
I simply must applaud the author’s brazen mastery of deeply provoking yet elegant prose, and preference over unique sentence structure. It was especially captivating to see the story unfold via multiple formats of text: first-/third-person, newspaper articles, legal/medical documents, etc. I only left out a star because there were some characters and plots that could have been further developed. Throughout this novel, the author truly and effortlessly created a sublimely visceral experience.
I simply must applaud the author’s brazen mastery of deeply provoking yet elegant prose, and preference over unique sentence structure. It was especially captivating to see the story unfold via multiple formats of text: first-/third-person, newspaper articles, legal/medical documents, etc. I only left out a star because there were some characters and plots that could have been further developed. Throughout this novel, the author truly and effortlessly created a sublimely visceral experience.
October 20, 2022
Harrison wrote an excellent portrait of a woman who develops self-destructive strategies to cope with her trauma.
May 1, 2016
In Black and White, and Black Again
The paperback has a perfect cover: a black-and-white close-up of a young woman partially covering one eye as she gazes into the camera, with a reversed negative of the same image on the back. The woman, we are to imagine, is Ann Rogers, daughter and only model for her late father, the famous photographer Edgar Evans Rogers. Or perhaps I should say notorious, for the publication in the 1970's of his photographs of his daughter, frequently naked and posed as if injured or dead, both thrilled and shocked the art world. As one critic would say of the MoMA retrospective of Rogers' work in 1992, the artist perfectly understood "the profound and ironical effect of offensive subject matter exquisitely crafted." In this respect, the fictional Rogers may be compared to, say, Robert Mapplethorpe. Or perhaps to Sally Mann, whose collection of often-nude photographs of her own young children, "Immediate Family," was first exhibited in 1990, and could thus have been an inspiration for Kathryn Harrison's book, published in 1993.
But don't forget that back cover, in which every hint of brightness is converted to black. Ann Rogers, when we first meet her, appears to be a success. Now a photographer herself, she is happily married, a partner in a thriving Manhattan firm, giving a portion of her income to destitute immigrants, and volunteering weekly at a hospital for orphaned children. Yes, she has an occasional shop-lifting habit, but at first this seems little more than a caper. But as the novel proceeds, it becomes clear that this is only the iceberg tip of Ann's increasing emotional dysfunction. As the final exposure of the MoMA exhibition approaches, the narrative jumps between Ann's childhood and the present, including court transcripts, newspaper articles, surveillance reports, and unwritten letters to her father from Ann herself. We begin to learn both the full extent of her trauma and the reasons for it. For it becomes clear that Ann's father was no Sally Mann, but a systematic abuser of his daughter—no less horrible for the fact that the implied sexuality and violence was never physical in nature—and his hitherto unpublished photographs go even further still.
This is a gut-wrenching book to read, but a brilliantly constructed psychological thriller nonetheless, screwing the vise inexorably to a climax that I can only call (with apologies to Capote) "Last Supper at Tiffanys." Some of the questions that the author raises about art and life are quite profound; it is clear she knows a good deal about photography. Let us hope that her first-hand experience stops there.
The paperback has a perfect cover: a black-and-white close-up of a young woman partially covering one eye as she gazes into the camera, with a reversed negative of the same image on the back. The woman, we are to imagine, is Ann Rogers, daughter and only model for her late father, the famous photographer Edgar Evans Rogers. Or perhaps I should say notorious, for the publication in the 1970's of his photographs of his daughter, frequently naked and posed as if injured or dead, both thrilled and shocked the art world. As one critic would say of the MoMA retrospective of Rogers' work in 1992, the artist perfectly understood "the profound and ironical effect of offensive subject matter exquisitely crafted." In this respect, the fictional Rogers may be compared to, say, Robert Mapplethorpe. Or perhaps to Sally Mann, whose collection of often-nude photographs of her own young children, "Immediate Family," was first exhibited in 1990, and could thus have been an inspiration for Kathryn Harrison's book, published in 1993.
But don't forget that back cover, in which every hint of brightness is converted to black. Ann Rogers, when we first meet her, appears to be a success. Now a photographer herself, she is happily married, a partner in a thriving Manhattan firm, giving a portion of her income to destitute immigrants, and volunteering weekly at a hospital for orphaned children. Yes, she has an occasional shop-lifting habit, but at first this seems little more than a caper. But as the novel proceeds, it becomes clear that this is only the iceberg tip of Ann's increasing emotional dysfunction. As the final exposure of the MoMA exhibition approaches, the narrative jumps between Ann's childhood and the present, including court transcripts, newspaper articles, surveillance reports, and unwritten letters to her father from Ann herself. We begin to learn both the full extent of her trauma and the reasons for it. For it becomes clear that Ann's father was no Sally Mann, but a systematic abuser of his daughter—no less horrible for the fact that the implied sexuality and violence was never physical in nature—and his hitherto unpublished photographs go even further still.
This is a gut-wrenching book to read, but a brilliantly constructed psychological thriller nonetheless, screwing the vise inexorably to a climax that I can only call (with apologies to Capote) "Last Supper at Tiffanys." Some of the questions that the author raises about art and life are quite profound; it is clear she knows a good deal about photography. Let us hope that her first-hand experience stops there.
June 2, 2008
Harrison's writing style is descriptive, entertaining and easy to read. I always find myself wishing for some darkly despairing bit of truth, which I've been led to believe her writing contains but have never actually felt. I'm left with a "yeah, and?" sort of feeling, but not one strong enough to wish for more from her.
July 20, 2010
Boo the critical acclaims. It wasted my time
March 13, 2018
This book started well but the story fell away and became as disorganised as the main character's life.
October 25, 2013
The book is about the complex love/hate relationship that Ann has with her deceased father. Although she wants to be accepted by her father, his coldness towards Ann makes her ambivalent to her desire for closure from him. The coldness exhibited by the father towards Ann and the resulting invasion of privacy that the father exhibited towards Ann and his eventual suicide leads her to be medically non-compliant in her self-care for her Diabetes Mellitus type 1, drug abuse of speed, and shoplifting in an effort to gain control of her life and feel good. This book is an excellent study on what happens to woman when parental love is lacking from her life and she feels unwanted.
Ann wants the attention of her emotionally cold father by posing nude for him. She edits weddings to look happy an in exact rendition of the nervous wreck everyone is during the actual wedding. Ann takes speed for an upper and buys it from Theo their receptionist. To what degree are drug dealers responsible for what they are dealing if they know that the person they are dealing to is unhealthy for the drugs? Even though Ann is the boss, the fact that Theo s her dealer makes him have the ability to be lazy if he wants to be. She has diabetes type 1 which makes using speed dangerous. Speed is an upper that Ann takes to guard against depression. She takes cabs b/c he changes into stolen clothes in them. When she does drugs, she shoplifts. She is a pro @ stealing things. She loves taking photographs of wedding an she is the only one of the photographers who edits her own work by imagining what the bride would like.
Carl is a real estate developer who buys and sells real estate. He loves the challenge of buying something new and fixing it up. He is not effected by the economy, he takes his time in fixing up old brownstones and selling it. Carl and Ann have light-hearted, enthusiastic sex.
Edgar Rogers who committed suicide in 1978 work was considered misogynistic and offensive whose body of work is the center of controversy of whether it is characterized as either art or obscenity. His work included graphic nudes of her daughter some with self-mutilation and sexual play. With a girl setting fire to herself before the opening of the show, it attracted controversy and strengthened the museum commenting on the strength of the photographs themselves as a controversial piece of art.
As a prof. of photography, Edgar had a reputation for being distant and stern. His reputation as an artist photographer centered on taking pictures of his daughter. He stuck with the morbid killing of his daughter as his motif for his photographs. Anne felt dead when her father commanded her to pose as if she were dead. She often wondered whether it was her wanting to see herself on film or a desire to please her father that compelled her to pose for him in these morbid scenes. Perhaps, Edgar was acting out what he wanted to happen when he play-acted Ann's death scenes for killing his beloved Virginia when she gave birth to Ann.
Virginia, Ann's mother, believed in spirits but not in her father's biblical teachings. Virginia heard the spirts tell her of Ann's birth. Edgar took pictures of parts of Virginia not the whole woman. Edgar practiced his photographic craft on Virginia. Virginia's father threw her out when she was pregnant with Ann. Virginia died during childbirth with Ann.
The only time that Edgar talked with feeling was when he was talking about Virginia so Anne would glean things from his discourse about her dead mother. Anne would rearrange the fragment pictures of her mother to a whole in the hopes that she would get to know her once she put her together. Ann blames herself for her mother's death and her father's misery b/c her mother died during her childbirth.
Ann still is haunted by her father even after his suicide. She is still ambivalent towards him both wanting to please him but @ the same time wary of his ubiquitous influence over her even after his death. She
burned his body to get rid of him until the show that will showcase his work. She tried to be the good girl that the father expected from her with numerous girl scout badges and being straight A student. She started using speed to make her feel good in place of her father's affection. She created 2 Ann's, one Ann who is good the other deviant. She wondered whether her father's infamy would make her dead father happy or was Virginia the only person that made him happy?
Ann looks forward to volunteering in a children hospital since she cannot have children of their own. Ann used her photography prowess to get into Yale. Carl immediately fell for Ann while she tried to hide her feelings from him by running away from him. Ann gets married to Carl when she tells her she should take vitamins since no one ever was concerned about her long term health for her that was a sign that he wanted to be around for the long haul. She seems to be constantly on the run even from her husband. Her bad alter ego comes out and threatens her marriage with crystal meth and shoplifting activities.
She teases her about giving him a BJ.
Ann would rather die of low blood sugar than disturb her father's shot of her. Ann slips into signs of death to get into "character" for her father. Ann has not change the way she looks since she was a teenager. She does her wedding editing in solitude b/c it takes enormous amount of concentration. She shop lifts b/c it thrills her.
Edgar only saw Ann as a photograph object instead a real human being who wanted a father-daughter relationship with him. Ann spent every second with Mark when she was not modeling for her father including being naked with him and sexual play with him. It surprised her that her father's photographs of her did not stop when she modeled for him but continued to what she thought was her private life. The father was charged by Texas CPS with medical neglect of Ann during her sessions. He admits to treating Ann as a photograph subject instead of his daughter when he shoots her.
Ann is attracted to Carl's contemplative nature of his reading the Bible in its entirety. Dr Ettinger recommends laser surgery on her eyes so she won't go blind. He also sees compromised circulation in her eyes. For Ann, a photographer compromised sight is a death knell to her profession. Carl senses that she is using speed b/c of the earlier than expected compromised to her circulation. He wants her to take care of herself which means stop taking drugs.
Her eye surgery was deemed a success but she has pain in the eye and she does not want to quit her drug addiction and take care of her diabetes. She made up stories of her father's greatness and felt guilt for his suicide. She created an affectionate father figure when the reality was that he was distant and cold. She wanted to have her father's affection through touching her while she modeled for him.
Roger's joined an Amish group and emigrated to Mexico after seeing the moral decline of the US. Michael was laziest of the Amish who emigrate to Sierra Madre so he left the commune and changed his name to Manuel and served Delgado. Delgado was interested in photography as one of his hobbies. Away from his Amish roots, Manuel discovered his entrepreneurial spirit. He soon had a thriving photographic business that he charged small amount so he could make money off the volume of the pictures he took. During the meningitis epidemic, he took pictures of dead children. In the end, the towns people ransacked his studio for fear of spreading the disease to others. Though morbid, the pictures were expertly taken.
The episode of insulin shock could be either b/c she or her father wanted her to die. Anne turns for help to her lawyer Doris who is in charge of Edgar's photographic estate. She has a weakness for helping out illegal immigrants finding them jobs and getting them out of the sex trade.
She looks @ a film of her father and mother laughing and loving life and realizes if her mother could love a man like her father then he was lovable which she already knew. Her mother died b/c of the placenta detached from her uterus and kneeling on her death bed surrounded by blood.
That evening, she had the aneurysm in her left eye burst and had to undergo a second eye surgery. The doctor says that the brain will just fill in the vision she is missing. The doctor also asked her to get her kidney check since a deterioration in eye sight correlates with a deterioration in kidney function due to her high blood pressure.
She use to cut herself so she would see the physical manifestation of the pain she felt inside from not being loved by her father.
Ann decides to be part of the show at the MOMA in exchange for control of the content underneath the photograph but she did not count on a teenage girl setting herself on fire with Ann's name on her which made Ann feel guilty.
Ann takes speed before she volunteers at Bellvue to hold a baby that is crying. Apparently, some babies die if no one holds them or @ least have failure to thrive issues.
James Sullivan seems to be a sexual predator masturbating to Ann's photographs and being overly friendly to the loner that Ann was. He became her stalker who liked to watch the Roger family's activities and collect Ann's old syringe. James Sullivan was caught by the police for taking Ann. In his apartment, they found photographs of Anne that her father discarded.
The father was only interested in Anne as a prepubescent subject not once she hit puberty.
Ann decided to continue to shoplift and use speed despite her health and high blood pressure. She decided to use speed to make her feel better about her father's retrospective photography. She got caught shoplifting and has an insulin reaction b/c she did it on purpose to avoid being prosecuted and she wakes up in the hospital. Carl rightly accuses her of shoplifting and fear for her safety made Carl rage against her b/c he rightly guessed she overdosed on insulin on purpose. Carl does not want to see Ann willfully self-destruct so he warns her that if anymore of self-destruction happens he will leave her.
In 1979, her father was ill and Ann rushed to the airport so she could make her flight to Texas. Her father feared how the body could betray him so that illness was possible. Ann could not believe her father had an affair with a homely Dianne when he could have had anyone he wanted b/c of his fame. When she saw the pictures of herself masturbating that her father took, she was shocked into taking cocaine so she could go back outside and put on a brave face for Harry, the art dealer. It was also then that she started to steal, while initially it was done on impulse and not thought out.
He recorded his suicide in a series of 6 polaroid shots. Her father became deranged with his hoarding of food and to the end of his life his avoidance of sunlight in favor of his dark room and the night. He apparently had a history of cyclical Major Depressive Episodes. Ann realizing her father's demise rightly applied only to out-of-state colleges while Mariette said it could have been them that Edgar targeted.
The day of the retrospective opening Ann is nervous that it has already affected her job performance. Ann is too thin now and she knows it. Carl was uncomfortable with the MOMA crowd. Ann steals a woman's evening bag while she does a hit of speed. It turns out the bag belongs to Priscilla Avery who owns half of downtown. Carl gives Ann an ultimatum that she either shape up or else he is going to separate from her.
Ann's medical non-compliance has plagued her all her life which in her junior year led to a diabetic coma. Since she wanted too commit suicide, the college forced her to go to therapy. While @ therapy, she figured out what was appropriate and inappropriate things for her to say and she would never confront her past during these sessions. But, when she graduated from Northwestern, she graduated summa cum laude.
She wanted to be present the moment her father committed suicide so they would be honest with each other. She wanted to understand her father's motives so she would search for it without knowing what she was looking for exactly. She understood her father's photography as a way for him to understand the world, to give it meaning to something that she thinks is inherently meaningless. She is an atheist. She wasted the meaning in her life by looking @ what happened with her father instead of focusing on Doris and Carl, people whom genuinely care for her. She realized that she also wasted her life trying to get him to love her since he blamed her for Virginia's death just by being born. She realized that her father lacked the ability to turn suffering for losing Virginia into love for Ann.
Ann walks into Tiffany's and attempted to steal a ring which she fails to do due to security. She was caught and taken away in an unmarked car. She also was reported in the NY Post. The show was bad for her b/c she felt scrutinized by the public.
A psychologist is called to see the mental status of Ann. She delusionally thought her issues were common knowledge. The psychologist said that her issues of self-mutilation were disturbing. She could not take her father's suicide and the fact he secretly took pictures of her naked with Mark was shocking. Ann emotionally shuts down in an attempt to protect herself. The shoplifting arms Ann against her fears. When she found the letter that her husband paid Berdorf for the things that she shoplifted, she associated that with her father's betrayal of her private life; her stealing from Tiffany's is an attempt by her to gain control in her life. She was diagnosed with having Bipolar with depressive features compounded with methamphetamine abuse.
Ann was voluntarily committed to a mental hospital. When Carl took her home, he wanted her to tell him everything about her past. Although she was willing, her fatigue prevented her from executing his wishes. She volunteers on Wednesday and holds a baby that she was able to make stop crying by singing to her.
Ann wants the attention of her emotionally cold father by posing nude for him. She edits weddings to look happy an in exact rendition of the nervous wreck everyone is during the actual wedding. Ann takes speed for an upper and buys it from Theo their receptionist. To what degree are drug dealers responsible for what they are dealing if they know that the person they are dealing to is unhealthy for the drugs? Even though Ann is the boss, the fact that Theo s her dealer makes him have the ability to be lazy if he wants to be. She has diabetes type 1 which makes using speed dangerous. Speed is an upper that Ann takes to guard against depression. She takes cabs b/c he changes into stolen clothes in them. When she does drugs, she shoplifts. She is a pro @ stealing things. She loves taking photographs of wedding an she is the only one of the photographers who edits her own work by imagining what the bride would like.
Carl is a real estate developer who buys and sells real estate. He loves the challenge of buying something new and fixing it up. He is not effected by the economy, he takes his time in fixing up old brownstones and selling it. Carl and Ann have light-hearted, enthusiastic sex.
Edgar Rogers who committed suicide in 1978 work was considered misogynistic and offensive whose body of work is the center of controversy of whether it is characterized as either art or obscenity. His work included graphic nudes of her daughter some with self-mutilation and sexual play. With a girl setting fire to herself before the opening of the show, it attracted controversy and strengthened the museum commenting on the strength of the photographs themselves as a controversial piece of art.
As a prof. of photography, Edgar had a reputation for being distant and stern. His reputation as an artist photographer centered on taking pictures of his daughter. He stuck with the morbid killing of his daughter as his motif for his photographs. Anne felt dead when her father commanded her to pose as if she were dead. She often wondered whether it was her wanting to see herself on film or a desire to please her father that compelled her to pose for him in these morbid scenes. Perhaps, Edgar was acting out what he wanted to happen when he play-acted Ann's death scenes for killing his beloved Virginia when she gave birth to Ann.
Virginia, Ann's mother, believed in spirits but not in her father's biblical teachings. Virginia heard the spirts tell her of Ann's birth. Edgar took pictures of parts of Virginia not the whole woman. Edgar practiced his photographic craft on Virginia. Virginia's father threw her out when she was pregnant with Ann. Virginia died during childbirth with Ann.
The only time that Edgar talked with feeling was when he was talking about Virginia so Anne would glean things from his discourse about her dead mother. Anne would rearrange the fragment pictures of her mother to a whole in the hopes that she would get to know her once she put her together. Ann blames herself for her mother's death and her father's misery b/c her mother died during her childbirth.
Ann still is haunted by her father even after his suicide. She is still ambivalent towards him both wanting to please him but @ the same time wary of his ubiquitous influence over her even after his death. She
burned his body to get rid of him until the show that will showcase his work. She tried to be the good girl that the father expected from her with numerous girl scout badges and being straight A student. She started using speed to make her feel good in place of her father's affection. She created 2 Ann's, one Ann who is good the other deviant. She wondered whether her father's infamy would make her dead father happy or was Virginia the only person that made him happy?
Ann looks forward to volunteering in a children hospital since she cannot have children of their own. Ann used her photography prowess to get into Yale. Carl immediately fell for Ann while she tried to hide her feelings from him by running away from him. Ann gets married to Carl when she tells her she should take vitamins since no one ever was concerned about her long term health for her that was a sign that he wanted to be around for the long haul. She seems to be constantly on the run even from her husband. Her bad alter ego comes out and threatens her marriage with crystal meth and shoplifting activities.
She teases her about giving him a BJ.
Ann would rather die of low blood sugar than disturb her father's shot of her. Ann slips into signs of death to get into "character" for her father. Ann has not change the way she looks since she was a teenager. She does her wedding editing in solitude b/c it takes enormous amount of concentration. She shop lifts b/c it thrills her.
Edgar only saw Ann as a photograph object instead a real human being who wanted a father-daughter relationship with him. Ann spent every second with Mark when she was not modeling for her father including being naked with him and sexual play with him. It surprised her that her father's photographs of her did not stop when she modeled for him but continued to what she thought was her private life. The father was charged by Texas CPS with medical neglect of Ann during her sessions. He admits to treating Ann as a photograph subject instead of his daughter when he shoots her.
Ann is attracted to Carl's contemplative nature of his reading the Bible in its entirety. Dr Ettinger recommends laser surgery on her eyes so she won't go blind. He also sees compromised circulation in her eyes. For Ann, a photographer compromised sight is a death knell to her profession. Carl senses that she is using speed b/c of the earlier than expected compromised to her circulation. He wants her to take care of herself which means stop taking drugs.
Her eye surgery was deemed a success but she has pain in the eye and she does not want to quit her drug addiction and take care of her diabetes. She made up stories of her father's greatness and felt guilt for his suicide. She created an affectionate father figure when the reality was that he was distant and cold. She wanted to have her father's affection through touching her while she modeled for him.
Roger's joined an Amish group and emigrated to Mexico after seeing the moral decline of the US. Michael was laziest of the Amish who emigrate to Sierra Madre so he left the commune and changed his name to Manuel and served Delgado. Delgado was interested in photography as one of his hobbies. Away from his Amish roots, Manuel discovered his entrepreneurial spirit. He soon had a thriving photographic business that he charged small amount so he could make money off the volume of the pictures he took. During the meningitis epidemic, he took pictures of dead children. In the end, the towns people ransacked his studio for fear of spreading the disease to others. Though morbid, the pictures were expertly taken.
The episode of insulin shock could be either b/c she or her father wanted her to die. Anne turns for help to her lawyer Doris who is in charge of Edgar's photographic estate. She has a weakness for helping out illegal immigrants finding them jobs and getting them out of the sex trade.
She looks @ a film of her father and mother laughing and loving life and realizes if her mother could love a man like her father then he was lovable which she already knew. Her mother died b/c of the placenta detached from her uterus and kneeling on her death bed surrounded by blood.
That evening, she had the aneurysm in her left eye burst and had to undergo a second eye surgery. The doctor says that the brain will just fill in the vision she is missing. The doctor also asked her to get her kidney check since a deterioration in eye sight correlates with a deterioration in kidney function due to her high blood pressure.
She use to cut herself so she would see the physical manifestation of the pain she felt inside from not being loved by her father.
Ann decides to be part of the show at the MOMA in exchange for control of the content underneath the photograph but she did not count on a teenage girl setting herself on fire with Ann's name on her which made Ann feel guilty.
Ann takes speed before she volunteers at Bellvue to hold a baby that is crying. Apparently, some babies die if no one holds them or @ least have failure to thrive issues.
James Sullivan seems to be a sexual predator masturbating to Ann's photographs and being overly friendly to the loner that Ann was. He became her stalker who liked to watch the Roger family's activities and collect Ann's old syringe. James Sullivan was caught by the police for taking Ann. In his apartment, they found photographs of Anne that her father discarded.
The father was only interested in Anne as a prepubescent subject not once she hit puberty.
Ann decided to continue to shoplift and use speed despite her health and high blood pressure. She decided to use speed to make her feel better about her father's retrospective photography. She got caught shoplifting and has an insulin reaction b/c she did it on purpose to avoid being prosecuted and she wakes up in the hospital. Carl rightly accuses her of shoplifting and fear for her safety made Carl rage against her b/c he rightly guessed she overdosed on insulin on purpose. Carl does not want to see Ann willfully self-destruct so he warns her that if anymore of self-destruction happens he will leave her.
In 1979, her father was ill and Ann rushed to the airport so she could make her flight to Texas. Her father feared how the body could betray him so that illness was possible. Ann could not believe her father had an affair with a homely Dianne when he could have had anyone he wanted b/c of his fame. When she saw the pictures of herself masturbating that her father took, she was shocked into taking cocaine so she could go back outside and put on a brave face for Harry, the art dealer. It was also then that she started to steal, while initially it was done on impulse and not thought out.
He recorded his suicide in a series of 6 polaroid shots. Her father became deranged with his hoarding of food and to the end of his life his avoidance of sunlight in favor of his dark room and the night. He apparently had a history of cyclical Major Depressive Episodes. Ann realizing her father's demise rightly applied only to out-of-state colleges while Mariette said it could have been them that Edgar targeted.
The day of the retrospective opening Ann is nervous that it has already affected her job performance. Ann is too thin now and she knows it. Carl was uncomfortable with the MOMA crowd. Ann steals a woman's evening bag while she does a hit of speed. It turns out the bag belongs to Priscilla Avery who owns half of downtown. Carl gives Ann an ultimatum that she either shape up or else he is going to separate from her.
Ann's medical non-compliance has plagued her all her life which in her junior year led to a diabetic coma. Since she wanted too commit suicide, the college forced her to go to therapy. While @ therapy, she figured out what was appropriate and inappropriate things for her to say and she would never confront her past during these sessions. But, when she graduated from Northwestern, she graduated summa cum laude.
She wanted to be present the moment her father committed suicide so they would be honest with each other. She wanted to understand her father's motives so she would search for it without knowing what she was looking for exactly. She understood her father's photography as a way for him to understand the world, to give it meaning to something that she thinks is inherently meaningless. She is an atheist. She wasted the meaning in her life by looking @ what happened with her father instead of focusing on Doris and Carl, people whom genuinely care for her. She realized that she also wasted her life trying to get him to love her since he blamed her for Virginia's death just by being born. She realized that her father lacked the ability to turn suffering for losing Virginia into love for Ann.
Ann walks into Tiffany's and attempted to steal a ring which she fails to do due to security. She was caught and taken away in an unmarked car. She also was reported in the NY Post. The show was bad for her b/c she felt scrutinized by the public.
A psychologist is called to see the mental status of Ann. She delusionally thought her issues were common knowledge. The psychologist said that her issues of self-mutilation were disturbing. She could not take her father's suicide and the fact he secretly took pictures of her naked with Mark was shocking. Ann emotionally shuts down in an attempt to protect herself. The shoplifting arms Ann against her fears. When she found the letter that her husband paid Berdorf for the things that she shoplifted, she associated that with her father's betrayal of her private life; her stealing from Tiffany's is an attempt by her to gain control in her life. She was diagnosed with having Bipolar with depressive features compounded with methamphetamine abuse.
Ann was voluntarily committed to a mental hospital. When Carl took her home, he wanted her to tell him everything about her past. Although she was willing, her fatigue prevented her from executing his wishes. She volunteers on Wednesday and holds a baby that she was able to make stop crying by singing to her.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 17, 2020
Kathryn Harrison mostly writes historical fiction, but shot to notoriety with her incest memoir, The Kiss (1997). Though her fiction tends to be less sensationalistic, Exposure (1993) might be an exception. Its context is partly contemporary, yet the main character’s disturbing personal past affects her present.
Harrison’s second novel (written before The Kiss), Exposure deals not with incest per se but with a toxic father-daughter relationship. Ann Rogers, an anti-heroine of a similar vintage to Harrison, leads a glamorous NY existence but secretly suffers the consequences of her famous photographer father’s exploiting her as a model when she was underage. A shoplifter addicted to meth while neglecting to treat her diabetes, Ann increasingly courts death – ironic, given her deathly appearance in her father’s high-art photos.
Despite the transgressive, narcissistic father theme, Exposure is far from an autobiographical novel, and yet so solidly researched and fully imagined that it rings true, its authentic feel enhanced by injecting the narrative – which alternates between present (early ’90s) and past (’60s–’70s) – with catalogue notes, court records, a surveillance report etc., allowing readers time out from the psychological intensity.
Though I’ve since read three of Harrison’s later novels, I enjoyed Exposure most. Perhaps its thematic, if not biographical, closeness to her life lends a depth that imagination alone seldom supplies.
It’s hard to say what impact this novel might have now (if any). The contrast between the contemporary scenes in Exposure and scenes from Ann's early life created tension. But today the scenes from ’92 feel historical too, because the difference between our present and Ann’s seems far vaster than that between her present and her past.
Harrison’s second novel (written before The Kiss), Exposure deals not with incest per se but with a toxic father-daughter relationship. Ann Rogers, an anti-heroine of a similar vintage to Harrison, leads a glamorous NY existence but secretly suffers the consequences of her famous photographer father’s exploiting her as a model when she was underage. A shoplifter addicted to meth while neglecting to treat her diabetes, Ann increasingly courts death – ironic, given her deathly appearance in her father’s high-art photos.
Despite the transgressive, narcissistic father theme, Exposure is far from an autobiographical novel, and yet so solidly researched and fully imagined that it rings true, its authentic feel enhanced by injecting the narrative – which alternates between present (early ’90s) and past (’60s–’70s) – with catalogue notes, court records, a surveillance report etc., allowing readers time out from the psychological intensity.
Though I’ve since read three of Harrison’s later novels, I enjoyed Exposure most. Perhaps its thematic, if not biographical, closeness to her life lends a depth that imagination alone seldom supplies.
It’s hard to say what impact this novel might have now (if any). The contrast between the contemporary scenes in Exposure and scenes from Ann's early life created tension. But today the scenes from ’92 feel historical too, because the difference between our present and Ann’s seems far vaster than that between her present and her past.
January 7, 2018
Ann Rogers, a seemingly successful and talented wedding photographer/videographer living in New York City, finds her life slowly deteriorating when the Museum of Modern Art decides to showcase a retrospective of her late father's work. The controversial portraits feature Ann as a child and early teen, her prepubescent body often nude or in various states of undress, with some of the photographs bordering on sexually explicit. While feminist groups around the city gather to protest the approach of the upcoming exhibition, claiming that the images are abusive and exploitative, others in the art community deem Edgar's Rogers work to be genius. Caught in a self-destructive cycle of drug use and shoplifting from high-end department stores such as Bergdorf Goodman's, Ann begins to question her own hazy memories of her father and the years she spent as a young girl in Texas. Did her father intentionally hurt her with his secretive and revealing photographs? Who was the true muse behind his haunting portraits?
Exposure is a relatively quick read at only 213 pages. It takes the form of a traditional 3rd person narrative as well as a collection of primary documents such as diary entries, newspaper articles, and court records that help piece the puzzle together. Alternating between a past and present storyline, the novel gives an in-depth look at Ann's crumbling psyche as her painful and increasingly troubling history is revealed. This is a story of trauma but also of strength and eventual survival. It's definitely worth a read!
Exposure is a relatively quick read at only 213 pages. It takes the form of a traditional 3rd person narrative as well as a collection of primary documents such as diary entries, newspaper articles, and court records that help piece the puzzle together. Alternating between a past and present storyline, the novel gives an in-depth look at Ann's crumbling psyche as her painful and increasingly troubling history is revealed. This is a story of trauma but also of strength and eventual survival. It's definitely worth a read!
April 7, 2019
This felt like an incredibly long book when I read it on my Kindle, but after checking on Goodreads I see it’s only 218 pages long. Possibly it felt this way because nothing happened. It feels odd to say this as there were several troubling events filtered into the story but no more than a couple pages was spent on any of them. Instead, the book rambles on about how a 30-something woman with daddy issues is responding in her adulthood to a dysfunctional childhood, despite having an otherwise perfect life with respect to career and love. This sounds interesting but unfortunately its how one would guess a rich person might “act out” - for instance throwing a $50k wardrobe out the window of their New York City high rise, or paying a $25,000 deposit to Bergdorf Goodman to be able to shoplift there without punishment. That just didn’t interest me and it undermined the premise. Lastly, the center point of her issues with her father (and the book) was so outrageous but underdeveloped that it felt fake and forced.
September 8, 2026
Harrison has a compelling writing style. I found the protagonist nearly unlikable (a kleptomaniac who routinely lies, indulges in habits she knows are extremely hazardous to her health, and engages in generally selfish behavior). At the same time, both the protagonist and the writing were interesting enough to keep me reading. That being said, it was definitely more of a character-driven than plot-driven book--- we spend a lot of time with the protagonist as she kind of unravels, but there isn't any clear endpoint or satisfying resolution. Overall, I did enjoy the read and would probably revisit.
July 11, 2017
This story follows Ann Rogers from childhood to dysfunctional adulthood and what might have been a promising career following in her late father’s footsteps as a known photographer.
Ann began her introduction into the photographic arts as her father’s young model, posing in various states of undress that stirred controversy while garnering her father with notoriety in the art world.
However, there are secrets that creep into her adult life that lead her to drugs, kleptomania, and other disastrous choices. The ending left me a little disappointed, but this is an intriguing story.
Ann began her introduction into the photographic arts as her father’s young model, posing in various states of undress that stirred controversy while garnering her father with notoriety in the art world.
However, there are secrets that creep into her adult life that lead her to drugs, kleptomania, and other disastrous choices. The ending left me a little disappointed, but this is an intriguing story.
May 10, 2017
Say what you want about freedom of expression and censorship, being the subject of your father's nude, sometimes sexual graphic photography is likely to mess with your head in our culture. Harrison's novel about such a woman (who happens to be a married videographer with a drug addiction) is powerful stuff but at the end the author retreats from exposing the psychological damage and provides a detached clinical assessment that shortchanges her own impressive literary gifts.
February 10, 2023
Don't let the thinness of the book deceive you - it is a much larger pill to swallow. It puts difficult themes of emotional abuse, addiction, self harm, and other maladaptive psychologic illnesses front and center, and forces the reader to confront the discomfort within themselves. The reader will need to empathize with the main character, or be defeated in her disturbing psychologic web. If you are able to reach the end, you will be greeted by some semblance of peace.
October 19, 2019
This book is traumatizing and haunting. A girl's father tackles themes of death and sex as he photographs her in questionable poses. As an adult, she tries to understand and come to terms with her father and his art.
December 14, 2017
Beautifully written and well crafted account of a troubled woman.
Insightful and worth reading.
Insightful and worth reading.
April 19, 2022
Interesting, almost addictive, although I was disappointed in the ending.
June 17, 2024
1st and last time I'll let a film boy pick out a book for me at the library
December 13, 2024
next was The Kiss but couldn’t stomach that
January 28, 2025
Niet uitgelezen
Vrouw heeft het moeilijk met haar gefrustreerde jeugd
Vrouw heeft het moeilijk met haar gefrustreerde jeugd
November 2, 2025
Pretty awful. Not sure how this got categorized as a “novel of psychological suspense”
August 18, 2026
Not an easy or light read, but very powerful and moving.
September 18, 2016
Adult survivors of childhood abuse will recognize many of the protagonist's problems and behaviors - huge gaps and confusions in memory, heedlessly self-destructive behavior, addiction, anxiety, and depression. What makes this book interesting is the form her abuse took. Ann Rogers was, for most of her childhood and adolescence, her father's photographic model. Her father posed her to look dead (and in other explicit poses) and became an art-world celebrity. Ann was left to pick up the pieces.
This book is set in NYC in the early 90s, and it absolutely catches that moment in time - in its literary style, the artistic scene it depicts, and the landscape of upper-middle class white women like Ann (the loft she shares with her husband, the trips to Bergdorf's, the lunches at Balducci's). Harrison leaves the reader guessing - just as Ann is guessing - at what ACTUALLY happened. What is Ann suffering from? She barely admits to remembering anything - does she remember? Did he love her or hate her? Did she consent to being his model? Was she capable of consent? In the end most of these questions are left open, and I liked that - it rings true to the character, who for the entirety of the novel is running from the reality of (and slowly breaking down because of) her father's imminent MOMA retrospective. It also rings true to the reality of adults who have survived any kind of abuse from a parent.
This book is set in NYC in the early 90s, and it absolutely catches that moment in time - in its literary style, the artistic scene it depicts, and the landscape of upper-middle class white women like Ann (the loft she shares with her husband, the trips to Bergdorf's, the lunches at Balducci's). Harrison leaves the reader guessing - just as Ann is guessing - at what ACTUALLY happened. What is Ann suffering from? She barely admits to remembering anything - does she remember? Did he love her or hate her? Did she consent to being his model? Was she capable of consent? In the end most of these questions are left open, and I liked that - it rings true to the character, who for the entirety of the novel is running from the reality of (and slowly breaking down because of) her father's imminent MOMA retrospective. It also rings true to the reality of adults who have survived any kind of abuse from a parent.
May 21, 2011
Long before Kathryn Harrison published her memoir about her affair with her father (The Kiss), she wrote Exposure, a story in which there is another very strange, almost incestuous, relationship between a girl and her father.
::: The View :::
Harrison's introduction to the world of Ann Rogers is riveting, and draws the reader immediately in. Ann is on her way to an event she is supposed to videotape for her business, and is changing in a cab into an outfit that she has just shoplifted. We soon learn that not only is Ann a successful videographer and compulsive shoplifter, but she also uses crystal meth, is married to a straight-laced restoration expert, and is the daughter of a very controversial photographer, Edgar Rogers.
Flickering back and forth between Ann's present as the protests and media frenzy surrounding a retrospective of her father's photography, descriptions of the photographs themselves, and remembering her past, we are immersed in Ann's self-destructive current state, as well as bearing witness to a past that has led her to the present.
::: Perspective :::
The writing in Exposure is magnificent, and I found myself reading this novel at every opportunity because I just didn't want to put it down. While at first the combination of Ann's diabetes and drug-use seems like over-the-top self-destructive behavior, it is a necessary plot contrivance to truly see the dysfunction in her relationship with her father.
The only faults that I had with the book were the number of unresolved subplots that Harrison left in her wake. We meet a woman who was allegedly Edgar Roger's mistress for years, but gain no insight into her character, nor how Ann actually felt about the woman. Ann's husband also makes sporadic appearances, leaving you to believe at some points that he is merely peripheral to the story, then playing a major role, then put back into the background.
The disturbing nature of Ann's relationship with her father is beyond creepy, and when one of the flashbacks approximately halfway through the book turns out to be a court report from an investigation by Social Services, you find yourself hoping against hope that someone will recognize Ann's situation for what it is, and free her.
Exposure is an excellent read, made all the more poignant now that the reader also knows about Harrison's own relationship with her father, and how far a girl will go to gain the affection from an emotionally or physically absent father that she craves.
This review previously published at Epinions: http://www.epinions.com/review/Exposu...
::: The View :::
Harrison's introduction to the world of Ann Rogers is riveting, and draws the reader immediately in. Ann is on her way to an event she is supposed to videotape for her business, and is changing in a cab into an outfit that she has just shoplifted. We soon learn that not only is Ann a successful videographer and compulsive shoplifter, but she also uses crystal meth, is married to a straight-laced restoration expert, and is the daughter of a very controversial photographer, Edgar Rogers.
Flickering back and forth between Ann's present as the protests and media frenzy surrounding a retrospective of her father's photography, descriptions of the photographs themselves, and remembering her past, we are immersed in Ann's self-destructive current state, as well as bearing witness to a past that has led her to the present.
::: Perspective :::
The writing in Exposure is magnificent, and I found myself reading this novel at every opportunity because I just didn't want to put it down. While at first the combination of Ann's diabetes and drug-use seems like over-the-top self-destructive behavior, it is a necessary plot contrivance to truly see the dysfunction in her relationship with her father.
The only faults that I had with the book were the number of unresolved subplots that Harrison left in her wake. We meet a woman who was allegedly Edgar Roger's mistress for years, but gain no insight into her character, nor how Ann actually felt about the woman. Ann's husband also makes sporadic appearances, leaving you to believe at some points that he is merely peripheral to the story, then playing a major role, then put back into the background.
The disturbing nature of Ann's relationship with her father is beyond creepy, and when one of the flashbacks approximately halfway through the book turns out to be a court report from an investigation by Social Services, you find yourself hoping against hope that someone will recognize Ann's situation for what it is, and free her.
Exposure is an excellent read, made all the more poignant now that the reader also knows about Harrison's own relationship with her father, and how far a girl will go to gain the affection from an emotionally or physically absent father that she craves.
This review previously published at Epinions: http://www.epinions.com/review/Exposu...
September 23, 2016
A frightening yet realistic look into a damaged mind.
June 19, 2014
This was a rather quick read, and a subject matter that is, at times, disturbing - but I feel that Kathryn Harrison makes a point in this novel, raises an issue that is worth discussing in our time; the question of Exposure - What is photography? What is "out of line"?
The story follows Ann, when as an adult, she struggles with her experiences and memories of her young self acting as a model for her father in his photography. He never touches her, but his photographs are explicit to the degree that you ask yourself if it is 'art' or not. Ann's troubled upbringing brings har into hardships as an adult, addiction and fears - and when an upcoming show is planned to feature some of her late fathers' 'never Before seen'-photographs of his daughter, her World literary starts to crumble.
I liked how the story was presented, in sections jumping back and forth in time, intermingled with articles etc - it gave an extra dimension and depth to the reading of Ann.
Kathryn writes very realistically in my view - you really get to feel with Ann and her struggles, and see how things fall apart and her fights to come to grips with her past.
The story follows Ann, when as an adult, she struggles with her experiences and memories of her young self acting as a model for her father in his photography. He never touches her, but his photographs are explicit to the degree that you ask yourself if it is 'art' or not. Ann's troubled upbringing brings har into hardships as an adult, addiction and fears - and when an upcoming show is planned to feature some of her late fathers' 'never Before seen'-photographs of his daughter, her World literary starts to crumble.
I liked how the story was presented, in sections jumping back and forth in time, intermingled with articles etc - it gave an extra dimension and depth to the reading of Ann.
Kathryn writes very realistically in my view - you really get to feel with Ann and her struggles, and see how things fall apart and her fights to come to grips with her past.
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