EXAM ARTIST SUGGESTIONS:
- CINDY SHERMAN
- NANCY HONEY
- SAM TAYLOR-JOHNSON
WHAT IS THE PHOTOGRAPHIC GAZE?
The camera lens is another demonstration of a powerful gaze, referred to as the photographic gaze, simulating the gaze of the naked eye. Indeed, the former could even be more powerful than the gaze of the naked eye due to photographic permanence.
The act of photographing people involves a process of observation, scrutiny and looking. Sometimes the gaze is returned, and sometimes it is rejected. The power of the gaze can create complex relationships between the subject, the photographer and the audience. The camera lens is another demonstration of a powerful gaze, referred to as the photographic gaze, simulating the gaze of the naked eye.
The gaze, as a visual act, generates modes of power, domination, and control. It has the ability to categorize people, generate feelings of shame, and assert one’s superiority. Susan Sontag in On Photography addresses that “photographs are a neat slice of time, not a flow” (17). The stillness of a photograph provides it’s power and makes it more effective than television broadcasting or film. Photography, then, has the ability to capture in “still time” the expression of oppressed subjects as the camera gazes at them.
JOHN BERGER – WAYS OF SEEING:
In Ways of Seeing, an influential book based on a BBC television series, John Berger observed that ‘according to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome – men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at’ (Berger 1972, 45, 47). Berger argues that in European art from the Renaissance onwards women were depicted as being ‘aware of being seen by a [male] spectator.’ Ways of Seeing is based on the 1972 BBC series and comprised of 7 essays, 3 of which are entirely pictorial, Ways of Seeing is a seminal work which examines how we view art.
Berger adds that at least from the seventeenth century, paintings of female nudes reflected the woman’s submission to ‘the owner of both woman and painting’. However it can still be argued even through woman’s feminist movements, women are still being viewed sexually and through and objective manner through the male gaze.
‘A man’s presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. His presence may be fabricated, in the sense that he pretends to be capable of what he is not. But the pretence is always towards a power which he exercises on others. By contrast, a woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her.’
The juxtaposition in the quote located in Berger’s bool ‘Ways of Seeing’ presents the contrast between gender stereotypes. The man is shown to be more in power and control, whereas the woman is described as dainty and submissive. This quotation shows the past and present view of the gender stereotypes which can also be supported by Laura Mulvey’s ‘Male Gaze’ theory where women are sexualised for the male gratification.
FORMS OF GAZE:
- the spectator’s gaze: the gaze of the viewer at an image of a person (or animal, or object) in the text;
- the intra-diegetic gaze: a gaze of one depicted person at another (or at an animal or an object) within the world of the text (typically depicted in filmic and televisual media by a subjective ‘point-of-view shot’);
- the direct [or extra-diegetic] address to the viewer: the gaze of a person (or quasi-human being) depicted in the text looking ‘out of the frame’ as if at the viewer, with associated gestures and postures (in some genres, direct address is studiously avoided);
- the look of the camera – the way that the camera itself appears to look at the people (or animals or objects) depicted; less metaphorically, the gaze of the film-maker or photographer.
LESS MENTIONED FORMS OF GAZE:
- the gaze of a bystander – outside the world of the text, the gaze of another individual in the viewer’s social world catching the latter in the act of viewing – this can be highly charged, e.g. where the text is erotic (Willemen 1992);
- the averted gaze – a depicted person’s noticeable avoidance of the gaze of another, or of the camera lens or artist (and thus of the viewer) – this may involve looking up, looking down or looking away (Dyer 1982);
- the gaze of an audience within the text – certain kinds of popular televisual texts (such as game shows) often include shots of an audience watching those performing in the ‘text within a text’;
- the editorial gaze – ‘the whole institutional process by which some portion of the photographer’s gaze is chosen for use and emphasis’ (Lutz & Collins 1994, 368)
MOODBOARD:
THE MALE GAZE AND HYPERFEMININITY:
WHAT IS THE MALE GAZE?
The male gaze is a feminist theory that states that cinema narratives and portrayals of women in cinema are constructed in an objectifying and limiting manner to satisfy the psychological desires of men, and more broadly, of patriarchal society.
The term was popularized, fifty years ago, by the British film theorist Laura Mulvey. Mulvey wrote, in 1973 an essay called “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” of how the “male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly.” Mulvey sought to break the conventions and exposing the cinematic conventions in stereotyping women by reinforcing the patriarchal fantasy. Mulvey also notes that Freud had referred to (infantile) scopophilia – the pleasure involved in looking at other people’s bodies as (particularly, erotic) objects. In the darkness of the cinema auditorium it is notable that one may look without being seen either by those on screen by other members of the audience. Furthermore, Mulvey argues that various features of cinema viewing conditions facilitate for the viewer both in the voyeuristic process of objectification of female characters and also the narcissistic process of identification with an ‘ideal ego’ seen on the screen.
‘An idea of woman stands as lynch pin to the system: it is her lack that produces the phallus as a symbolic presence, it is her desire to make good the lack that the phallus signifies’ Mulvey presents this idea that a women’s body its one for the male pleasure, which confirms this idea of the male gaze. Women are exposed highly objectified, and sexualised in order to please the patriarchal society that women are seen as a submissive accessory for men. Furthermore, this idea of highly sexualised women, alludes to the idea of hyper-femininity that highlights the way women are viewed by the male gaze, and how they should present themselves in society.
MY INTENTION FOR THE EXAM PROJECT THROUGH THE PHOTOGRAPHIC GAZE:
For my exam project through the theme, Observe, Seek, and Challenge I plan on studying and photographing females through the male gaze and exploring the idea of hyper femininity. This reinforces the photographic theme of ‘gaze‘ as Laura Mulvey states the ‘structures ways of seeing and pleasure in looking’ which enforces the concept of men gazing at women. In order for this project to fit with the exam requirement’s I will be focusing on the male gaze, and how men have a sexualised view of women which can be seen through the artist Cindy Sherman. In one of Sherman’s photography projects she emphasises the idea of sexualising women for the male society and she interprets this by exaggerating the beauty standards through the hyper-realistic makeup. However, through her interpretation you can argue that she is challenging the beauty standards by taking imagery of the hyper-real makeup by creating the unexpected and forming it into art. The makeup she presents in her photographs challenges the incredibly high beauty standards in the patriarchal society, which could also work for the exam theme ‘challenge’. However in another project she firmly focuses on reinforcing the stereotypical view of women, which could be a protest of the stereotypical views of women.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/the-invention-of-the-male-gaze
