Looking is not indifferent. There can never be any question of 'just looking'. - Victor Burgin (1982)
Above is my original image that i created for the male gaze, i wanted to portray how advertisements use woman and objects to sell products, yet i did not want my image to look like a commercial advertisement but my own advertisement to 'challenge the gaze'. Usually when using woman within the gaze, the woman often isn't looking directly at the camera with allows the viewer to feel more comfortable looking at the woman whilst she is being objectified. The fact that she is staring straight into the lens, i feel makes the viewer feel quite uncomfortable, its almost as if she is making you feel ashamed to be looking. I have then used the prop of a playstation remote, which has two main reasons as to why i chose to you this prop. Its is a product that is often advertised "the playstation" and a large audience of the playstation is male, also a remote is used to control, manipulated and demand the movements of the character or objects within the game. I feel that using this object would throw out these came connotations even when put on to a woman. I then juxtaposed this with putting the remote around her neck which i felt added the ideology that she was being choked by the object. I wanted my model to be nude so the viewer still could have the intentions to think what is beyond the screen but all the other aspects of the image have been purposely done to challenge the viewer, to make them think about how women are objectified through the use of the male gaze and maybe think about would they still be drawn to advertisements with naked women if they were more like the one above, or would they feel uncomfortable and unfair to the women that is being portray in still life product fashion.
After having my crit the feedback i received about my image wasn't very positive and nobody understood the concept of the image, although myself felt that this image had been thought out and constructed appropriately. I felt that if my audience was unaware of the message i was trying to portray that the image did not work. I couldn't reshoot the image as was recommended as i didn't have access to my model or props and equipment in such a small time space. So had to made the decision to discard the original image and reshoot.
I then decided to take the following picture….
I still wanted to challenge the gaze within my image. I was inspired by raw topic of anorexia, so many women across he world are constantly unhappy with their weight and i feel it is very much to do with the fact that the media feeds us, untrue information and images about how women should look. I looked up some of the crazy things people do to get slim and one of the main things that came up was that models with anorexia, eat cotton wool to fill up their stomachs and also drink water to full out their bodies and also to lose any water weight that they may be carrying. Using this information i decided to photograph the most well known 'ideal' figure that has ever been created. Barbie is world famous and is looked at as the ideal of women, blonde, blue eyes, tiny waist, nice boobs and bum, children from the ages of 4 play with these dolls and therefor from a very young ages have this unrealistic ideology of how women should look and also as to what is pretty or beautiful. I then decided to lay down the barbie doll on a bed off cotton wool and use a large plastic water bottle as the back drop. Even when not using a real person i have turn her head so she is slightly looking away from the camera and have covered half of her private area with cotton wool, which allows the viewer to use their imaginations of what is. I have also tried to line her breasts up with the centre of the image so even when not purposely doing so, you look straight at her breast's. I feel this really pushes the idea that "Looking is not indifferent. There can never be any question of 'just looking'". I feel that this image does communicate the male gaze as i have used aspects such as not showing parts of the body, not having eye contact with the lens and also have used an ideal woman. Given this i do think that unless you knew about the extremes people go to you may just think she's laying on cotton wool because its soft, but i like that the image catches your eye then you have to consider all aspects of the image and maybe question why i have done this. I feel making your audience question your images and why you have done and used what you have make the image a lot more interesting for the photographer and the audience.
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