For my own interpretation of observe seek and challenge I am wanting to explore femininity and the photographic gaze, more specifically the male and female gaze. I will gaining inspiration from Nancy honey who presents her work through a documentary and portraiture style through the observation of typical female stereotypes. And also Cindy Sherman who uses her work to explore and embody the vulnerability of females and how her work could be feeding into the male gaze.

The definition of female gazes is “a feminist theory term referring to the gaze of the female spectator, character or director of an artistic work, but more than the gender it is an issue of representing women as subjects having agency. As such all genders can create films with a female gaze.” I chose this topic of the male gaze as it fits in with the exam theme of ‘Observe, Seek & Challenge’ as ‘the gaze’ is a form of seeking, and can be a very personal topic to many people.

For this final project, I would like to present my study in a photo book form. As a result of this, I intend to produce many photoshoots so that I will have a large variety of images that I can pick from. This means that, I would roughly need a minimum of 30 final images to create my book. I have plans to begin my study for this project as soon as possible to allow me the most amount of time to compete it.

Below are some mood boars from my two artist references; Nancy Honey and Cindy Sherman of whom I am gaining inspiration from: