Ideas for Photographic Shoot

After both photographic shoots I have decided that for the next photographic shoot I am going to incorporate both of them into one. For example I am going to pick two or three settings from the 1st photographic shoot and the idea of the moving images from the 2nd photographic shoot and bind them together. The photographs below are the settings that I am going to use.

'Social Types and Representation' - Photomedia Reader (Second Year)

I have been looking at an article from our second year module Photomedia called “Social Types and Representation.”  This article stood out to me because it discusses how identities are socially constructed.  For example it made me think of the Youtube video I uploaded to my blog earlier called “How to trick people into thinking you are good looking.”  This is because in the video she is altering her image to what she believes is represented as beautiful that has been social constructed by the media.  “We experience our lives and present ourselves to others in ways which have been shaped by our knowledge of films and photos we have seen, stories we have read and so on” (pg 5).  It is reiterating that we believe what we see and what we are taught, but it does not necessarily represent reality, but are representations of what the media believes it to be.  This is what I am trying to portray in my photographs that representation of women (in the media) is not necessarily reality, for example all people don’t look like certain images of women that are produced, but feel pressured to change their appearance to achieve what they see in front of them.

I want to show through my images how powerful the media’s representation is, “No representation is simply a representation of reality: it is always a reality sense from a particular perspective or subject positions” (pg 7). For example shown through media images such as television, magazines and photographs. Stereotypes’ are another form of representation, they define people for example women’s appearance and how they act in society. Relating back to the film ‘Miss Representation’ is just shows how hard it is to escape from certain stereotypes of women which are represented in society though the media.

Photographic Shoot 2

“Since femininity is associated with matter, the symbol of femininity is the female body. In contemporary culture, the body, especially the female one, is regarded as an object that can be shaped and modelled to match the promoted beauty standards” (Damean, 90).  After Reading “Media and Gender: Constructing feminine identities in a postmodern culture’ by Diana Damean it made me realise how the media portray certain beauty standards for women, showing them that they can change their appearance to achieve this level of beauty.  However images of women portrayed in the media can influence women to feel suffocated by the representation of these beautiful idealised women. The “Media sets standards for the shape and the dimensions of the “beautiful” body, according to a series of binary oppositions” (Damean 91).  It can be said that the media defines and shows women what ‘beauty’ is supposed to looks like, through women’s appearances in magazines, television, etcetera.  This may leave some women feeling the pressure to conform to these standards; and feeling smothered by the media’s representation of ‘beauty’.  This influenced me for my next photographic shoot, where the images smother her face, losing her identity, shown through the magazine cuttings covering her face.

For this photographic shoot I stuck the images on the girls face and then got two people to peel the images off. I reversed the images so that it looks as though they are placing the photographs on her face. I did this as I wanted to show that she was not making the decision but was being influenced by other people and the media. I then used video software to create the moving image. A tripod was essential for this photographic shoot so that the camera stayed in a stable position throughout the process.

Photographic Shoot 1

For this photographic shoot I was experimenting with the idea that even in our home which is supposed to be a safe place we are still being ‘policed’ by the media in the everyday, without subconsciously knowing it. I tried to portray this by placing the camera high up like a CCTV camera view, watching the girl, but in my tutorial with Michelle though we decided that this was not as affective.  However we did like the shots of the girl in front of the laptop and when she is lying on the bed watching the television because of the lighting and composition. This is something that I will take into consideration for the next photographic shoot and experiment with.

For this photographic shoot I got the idea of the CCTV camera view reading, “Media and gender: Constructing feminine identities in a postmodern culture” by Diana Damean. I found it really interesting how she relates to Michel Foucault that women have ‘surveillance’ and ‘control’ over their bodies and image because of the way the media portrays stereotypes of beautiful women and they fell the need to change and alter themselves in order to fit into these stereotypes. This relates to what I have been exploring that women feel pressurized by the media to conform to what society see as ‘beautiful’. Below are extracts from her book which stood out to me:

“Since the femininity standards are difficult to reach, women are compelled to live most of their lives with a feeling of deficiency, of not being good enough, which means that a severe control over the body can also affect the mind. As it appears, the key-concepts the media discourse operates with are "surveillance" and "control" over the female body, both external and internal. Media use this strategy so as to shape women's bodies as well as to fashion their social roles” (Damean, 2006, p.91). This is where my initial idea grew from.

“Women are prisoners in this virtual panopticon as, once aware they are being objects of the gaze, they apply to themselves the normalizing politics of control and self-surveillance” (Damean, 2006, p.91). – This gave me an idea for my next photographic shoot where images (magazine cuttings) are forced on a women’s face, but she is powerless to object.

Composition

This week’s lecture discussed composition and how important it is to a photograph. An image that was used as an example was of a woman who took a photograph every day for four and a half years and then created it into a moving image. This video worked extremely well because of the composition of all the photographs, as they were almost exactly in the same position every time. Thinking ahead for my photographic shoot I want the composition of the close up of the women’s face to be framed well. I also like the stuttering of the images which I hope to incorporate into my images.

 

Edward Mybridge

During my tutorial with Michelle, she said that I should produce images that are more challenging and extreme because last term they were rather simple, which I completely agree with.  I want to draw on the idea of ‘cinemagraphs’ and how a photograph almost becomes a video, with the images coming alive.  I will photograph in continuous shooting mode to achieve this, thefore producing hundreds of photographs that when put together collaborate into a moving image.  This made me think of Eadweard Mybridge photographs where his images communicate and capture time and how "still images are not really motionless."  This gave me an idea to make my photographs come to live and move.

Edweard Mybridge famously proved that when a horse gallops all four legs lift of the ground. This was impossible to prove before because the human eye could not see this. His photographs clearly show movement which I want to portray in my photographs. Photographs show something in the past but I want my photographs to represent the present because they are moving images. Below are some images that Eadweard Mybridge produced:

Izabella Damavlys Photography and Dolce & Gabbana Advert

After what Jim Steyer said in ‘Miss Representation’ I thought of looking up violent, sexualized and demining images of women.

I found a photographer called Izabella Demavlys who was a fashion photographer but now focuses on documentary work. These photographs are from her latest series ‘Without a Face’ which “illustrate a deeper definition of beauty, I photograph women whose pictorial beauty radiates from their accomplishment, character and personal struggles” (quoted in Schmelzer, 2010). These are portraits of Pakistani women who have been attacked by men with kerosene oil or battery acid. The portraits depict a different kind of beauty that normal portraits of women may not show, which I think portrays a strong message of what ‘beauty’ really is.

After reading “Photography: A Critical Introduction” Michelle Henning’s section ‘Objects of desire’ stood out to me. This is because it describes how: “Advertising and publicity images as well as erotica were criticised for eroticising the female body in a way in which turned women into more objects for a male gaze, a process usually termed objectification…We need to consider not only how photographs present women’s bodies for a male viewer but also how this process spills over into everyday life and into how men view actual women, and how women view themselves” (Henning, 1997, p.226). This made me think of how adverts show women not only to be gazed at by men, but how the women looking idealised and almost ‘perfect’ for the male gaze. Therefore leaving some women feeling suffocated, not only by the pressure to look beautiful for themselves but also for men. In order to achieve the high standard of beauty that is put forward in front of women through the media, such as magazines, it may leave some women feeling the need to alter their appearance. After reading this I decided to try and find an advert that was criticised for eroticising the female body.

Violent images of women being sexualized has also been a problem within the media. When researching adverts of women, Dolce & Gabbana frequently was being criticized for the way they have depicted women in their adverts and have been under scrutiny over many adverts. Like what Jim Steyer said how people are trying to do more and more shocking images to get attention. For example the Dolce & Gabbana adverts below were banned in several countries around the world for glorifying rape as it was labeled as degrading to women.