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.