Reversing the Gaze
Growing up in the south, I have always lived in a conservative environment for the majority of my life. As a female, this often meant surrendering to male dominance around the household and a general lack of participation in business matters. The females in my family often struggled to gain control and confidence within our home and I eventually watched my mom struggle to find her independence as a single mother. Through my photography, I am investigating what it means to be a female looking at a male and how control can be exhibited through the photographic medium. This series consists of an evolving collection of photographs intended to explore the male figure and how it can function in contemporary photography. Historically, the female form has been portrayed by men and for men. This body of work operates as a response to male photographers, from Edward Weston to Helmut Newton, which have photographed the female nude as the object of male desire.
This series strives to call attention to the social imbalances relating to the male and female binaries that have been present within the history of photography/art in order to remove the female gender from the margin. Just as the objectified female has been considered as “fine art” subject matter, the male form should be equally as recognized even in the most revealing of mediums.Primarily, I am approaching my images by critiquing the structure of power that has influenced how the economy of “the gaze” has typically functioned over the last couple of decades.
In 1880, Edouard Manet completed his painting, Olympia, which transformed the general function of the gaze. For the first time in art history, the nude female subject, Olympia, is returning the gaze to her typically male viewer. As women have become more included within the margin, they are more commonly tolerated for returning the gaze. Throughout the 1970s, women began taking control over how their bodies are portrayed by photographing themselves and other females. However, the objectified male from the perspective of a female continues to be excluded as a fine art subject matter and specifically within photography. My body of work is identifying men as the receiver of the gaze without the ability to return the gaze. Roberta McGrath states in her piece Re-reading Edward Weston, “The denial to look is also, by implication, the denial of woman’s access to the production of knowledge.” Furthermore, I am a female photographing a male, directly illustrating the man as an object of a woman’s desire. I am, therefore, a woman contributing to the production of knowledge.
